What chicken nuggets taught me

Working with over 100 families a year as a Picky Eating Advisor provides a lot of stories from the meal table. Some of them are memorable because they are amusing, some because they are the story of 1,000 other families, and some because they teach us a valuable lesson.

When I am talking to parents, I often learn new things or a new approach too. The relationship is definitely not only one way.

One of these stories is the lesson of the chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets or other ‘must haves’

Often fussy eaters have a fairly narrow range of foods that they eat.

Because of this they tend to eat them every day, or at least on a very frequent basis. This leads to a few further challenges:

1. Repetition narrows choices. The more often a child eats only a narrow band of foods, the more difficult it becomes to accept foods outside of those choices.

2. Boredom. If a child eats the same foods over and over again, it is quite common to get bored with eating them.

Often children who are picky eaters do not have a lot of enthusiasm for food, but how much of this is because they just are not that interested in eating, and how much because it is not interesting or exciting is hard to know!

This is one of the picky eating paradoxes, children only want to eat a narrow band of foods, but then they are bored eating just those.

3. Dropping foods. It is common for fussy eaters to drop foods. If you ate a particular food day in day out wouldn’t you get bored, I would.

Or maybe a child has a ‘bad’ experience and so no longer wants to eat that food. This may be something minor in the scheme of things but can put a food hesitant child off eating. For example, the sandwich goes mushy, or the chicken nuggets are overcooked.

Dropping foods is not part of the ‘they’ll just grow out of it myth’ but if I had a dollar for every parent I speak to who says “my child used to eat …” I’d be rich ☹