The science of why your child is a fussy eater – and nine tips to overcome it

In his new book, Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids, obesity researcher Dr Nick Fuller cuts through the noise by presenting research-based and scientifically proven food facts; and by explaining how to apply these facts to achieve healthy outcomes for your family.

“It’s a whole family approach, a practical guide to help you do your very best for your own health, and for the person you love most in the world: your child” says Dr Fuller from the University of Sydney’s Boden Group based at the Charles Perkins Centre.

“One of the biggest challenges kids throw at us is fussy eating. One minute, your little one is happy to try every new food you give them at mealtimes. The next, they're refusing to eat anything that isn’t a chicken nugget smothered in barbeque sauce.”

Dealing with fussy eating is one of the most significant – and stressful – challenges many parents face, leaving them frustrated and worried about their child's nutrition, development and health.

But fussy eating is actually considered normal in toddlers – in fact, all parents should expect their child to go through a fussy eating phase.

So, here’s everything you need to know about fussy eating, why it’s essential to manage it carefully and nine tips to help overcome it.

Fussy eating defined

Fussy eating – also referred to as picky eating and selective eating – is the term used to describe an unwillingness to eat familiar or new foods. A lack of diet variety also characterises this behaviour, with fussy eaters typically eating a diet comprising less than 20 different foods.

Research confirms fussy eating is a normal stage of development – almost one in two children will go through a period of selective eating in their toddler years, with the behaviour typically peaking around the age of three.

Fussy eating behaviour tends to resolve itself, usually as children become more socially active through attending preschool and school.
 

The science of why children are fussy eaters

The reason why toddlers predominantly go through a period of fussy eating is basic biology – the roots of this behaviour can be traced back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors and their development of a range of physiological responses for survival.

This included developing ‘food fussiness’ – a natural aversion to unfamiliar foods and bitter flavours – like vegetables – to avoid ingesting potential toxins.

Additionally, as our hunter-gatherer ancestors often experienced extended periods of food scarcity, they learned to seek out and store high-energy, palatable foods found in nature that were also high in natural sugars, fat and protein, such as fruits, honey, meat and nuts, to avoid starvation.

As well as offering the best ‘bang for buck’ calorie-wise, these foods also provided a natural high and sense of satisfaction, triggering the release of feel-good chemicals called endorphins and learning chemicals called dopamine, which enabled our ancestors to remember the pleasure associated with eating that food and trigger a response the next time they saw it.

The challenge of the modern-day environment

When you’re involved in a highly-charged standoff with your three-year-old over a plate of healthy food, it’s easy to relent and offer them that favoured chicken nugget and hope they’ll soon grow out of their food fussiness.

But how we respond to and manage fussy eating is critical for two reasons:

1. The evolutionary traits that once ensured our survival are now working against us.
2. The food we feed our child from an early age shapes their lifelong food preferences.

In today's world of food abundance, we’re spoilt for choice, but we increasingly rely on processed and fast foods that didn’t exist in our ancestors’ times – foods that are low in nutrition, high in calories, and loaded with added fats, sugars and salt – to fuel us instead of taking advantage of the many options still offered by nature.

Just as our ancestors got a high from the natural foods they consumed, the processed and fast foods available today also give us a high, releasing feel-good chemicals every time we eat and see them. But it’s not only this high that makes it hard to stay away from these happiness-inducing foods – evolution means our bodies are now also becoming wired to crave them and seek them out.

Over time our genes haven’t changed, but the food environment has. It has created an evolutionary mismatch, where evolved traits that were once advantageous to ensure our survival have become harmful to us in modern-day life. In the case of food, our calorie-seeking brains were a useful trait when food was hard to come by, but not so much when we’re submerged in a modern world saturated with food. We haven’t evolved from these ancient survival circuits in the brain.

When it comes to your kids, it’s easy to offer them food you know they will eat, but what you feed them from a very early age will shape their lifelong food preferences. As parents, we need to be wary of wiring the next generation to get their food highs from fast and processed options loaded with added fats, sugars and salt. These foods are low in nutrition and very high in calories; they cause cravings and they can result in overconsumption due to a loss of portion control when eating them. Our growing addiction to processed and fast food is contributing significantly to poor outcomes for our current generation, with data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare confirming that 25 per cent of Australian children and adolescents are struggling with their weight.

To combat this, we need to focus on hardwiring our children to rely on 'nature's treats'. These are nutritious foods, packed with natural sugars and fats, like fruit and vegetables, honey, nuts and seeds. However, this is something that can be challenging to achieve at the best of times but even harder when we have a fussy eater.

Nine things you can do to overcome fussy eating

Make no mistake – dealing with a child who is a fussy eater is challenging, stressful and frustrating!

Fortunately, there are nine simple – but effective – things you can do to support introducing healthy foods to your child and overcome fussy eating:

1. Involve your child in meal preparation. Getting your child’s assistance with food shopping and preparation tasks is guaranteed to make them curious about the meal they’ve helped create and more willing to taste it.
2. Balance variety and familiarity. Ensuring your child’s plate features different colours, textures, and flavours is a surefire way to capture and hold their interest in new foods, as is introducing new options alongside familiar ones. You can check out this range of family-friendly recipes that even the fussiest of eaters will devour.
3. Offer small portions. Serving new foods in smaller servings will ensure you don’t overwhelm your child with new tastes and allow them to let you know if they’d like more of what they’ve tasted.
4. Create a positive eating environment. Ensuring mealtimes are a relaxed and fun activity when your child is being introduced to foods will help create positive associations with trying new things and healthy eating.
5. Eliminate mealtime distractions. Turning off the television and putting the devices away will make sure your child can focus on the important task of tasting and fully experiencing new foods.
6. Try, try again (and then again!). Encouraging your child to taste a new food over time will pay off, with research suggesting it can take 8-10 exposures to a new fruit or vegetable before a child is willing to accept eating it.
7. Resist the urge to make another meal. While it’s tempting to offer an alternative when your child refuses a meal, it creates more problems than it solves, teaching fussy eaters they can get the foods they like by refusing to eat what’s been served.
8. Don’t use food as a reward or punishment. Every parent has been there – trading the promise of a yummy dessert for two more bites of beans – but this practice only creates unhealthy associations with healthy foods.
9. Be a role model and sit together at the dinner table. We all know that kids closely observe and mimic their parents so the best way to overcome fussy eating is by showing enthusiasm for trying new foods and a positive attitude toward healthy eating.

Healthy Parents, Healthy Kids is published by Penguin Life.