Picky Eating & Food Guilt with Jennifer Anderson

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1:22Social media videos aren't calling the shots on what I do as a parent. Maybe there's some ideas. Maybe there's good ideas out there. There's good things. Like we educate ourselves. We read a book. We listen to a podcast. But at the end of the day, we're like, I'm going to have the courage to do what my kid needs, regardless of what other people think.

1:41Dr. Aliza Pressman:Jennifer Anderson is the founder of Kids Eat in Color, which has a social media community of over 2 million. and she's a registered dietitian and has a master's of science in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Her new book, Feed Them Well, A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life is out this September. And I am so excited that we are talking about how to raise kids with a healthy, judgment-free relationship with food and their bodies, and also navigating picky eating with that sensitive idea in mind, family pressures, and all the rest of the noise around food.

2:19Dr. Aliza Pressman:I'm Dr. Aliza Pressman, developmental psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, associate clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine, and the host of Raising Good Humans podcast. I am so glad you're here. So you build a whole story around embodied independence and a whole approach. And I want to like start big with this idea of what is embodied independence. So embodied independence is this idea that your child, what we want for our kids is for them to live in and love their bodies, love what they can do, and be able to be empathetic and feel what they feel, right? And we also need them to kind of think intellectually about their body.

3:12What does my body need? Oh, I need to take care of myself. I need to, you know, eat a balanced diet. We want them to be able to know how to take care of themselves. You know, like my kids, it's like, hey, you have to take a shower. These things that kids just aren't going to do, they're going to learn to do. And when we think about embodied independence, we're thinking of those two things coming together. Because it's not one thing, like we don't just want kids to enjoy eating, have a good relationship with their body. We also want them to take care of their body because it's not two different things.

3:48It's the same thing. So what I really wanted to do, and this is hard to do in our culture, we don't even have a word for this. Why I had to use two words is we have to bring together this idea that living in our bodies and taking care of it is the same thing. The first thing that I sort of, I love and is so counter to what a lot of people

4:11Dr. Aliza Pressman:are doing, whether it's accidental or on purpose and intentional is kind of all the judgment around food. So can you talk a little bit about how we can pull back this judgment while also supporting health and all the things that we're hoping for, especially when we have younger children, baby, even babies, like the whole range of development. We are, of course, thinking about wanting to do right by our kids. And so I think inadvertently the judgment comes in as a way of supporting our kids and giving them good habits that might be counterproductive. Yeah, I feel like parents now just have so much judgment.

4:57I mean, the question that I hear is, how much have I ruined my child? Right. It's not, did I ruin my child? It's just how much. And so as parents, we just have so many messages like this is the right way to do it. This is the right way. We have to feed them this. We have to give them this many nutrients. This food is toxic. There's so many of these that we feel like we can't even explore what might be okay for our kids. And we also just feel guilty and scared all the time because that's what is being put out there. That's the sort of content and headlines that do well, but that really erode our confidence as parents and our confidence in our ability to feed our kids.

5:40So when we kind of pull that back and say, OK, you know, there are some basic things that make sense. Like, no, don't let your kid eat cookies all day, every day. You know that already. You didn't need some, you know, Instagram post to tell you that. But also, it is OK for your kid to have some cookies like that can fit into a healthy dietary pattern. I think one of the things that kind of social media, news headlines and stuff really give us is this idea that single foods matter. Single foods are good. Single foods are bad. That isn't a helpful approach, in my opinion. What we really need to be asking is what foods are good for my child?

6:25What foods are bad for my child? Because, hey, if your kid has an allergy, there's definitely some foods that are going to be bad for your kid. So instead of just kind of embracing this, well, it's either good or bad, that's not a helpful way to think about food. And it also can be very inflexible. And you can have that yourself. You can pass it on to your kid. And that kind of leads to food rules and judgment and guilt and all sorts of things. Or if you have a more flexible approach, which is, hey, all foods can fit into my child's diet unless I've realized some foods are bad for them for some reason.

7:00So I'm going to just kind of explore. We're going to find out what's good for us. We're going to do what's best for the family. That's a more flexible approach that doesn't come with a lot of guilt or shame or fear because you're just exploring. And as the parent, you're running the experiment. You're actually in charge of this.

7:19Dr. Aliza Pressman:It brings you confidence, too. So can you give some concrete examples? Because I think one of the things is like, if you're starting early with this notion, then, you know, the inflexible, when you were talking about being inflexible, we can start to flag things that later in life we associate with disordered eating. And so one of the things that's really important about this approach is that you're also thinking about the sort of big picture, zoomed out way of thinking about growth and these healthy, this embodied independence and the way we feel about our bodies and what we're putting in our bodies and all the things.

8:01Dr. Aliza Pressman:And so many parents already have so much baggage about that. I was actually, I, speaking of social media, one thing that came into my feed that maybe is like for people that are just a little bit older, cause it was a Gen X, um, joke, but it was so accurate, which was, it was like a ma, a Gen X mom would rather their child's be thin then. And it was like listing all of the things that would be associated with success or not. Right. And I was like, oh my God, that's so true. Like the messaging was so focused on something that was very much problematic. Yeah, yeah. And I think that shifted, but I don't know where it is today.

8:46Dr. Aliza Pressman:And I don't know how the adults with all of the things that they're sitting with from their childhoods have access to kind of this healthy response to their kids, this nonjudgmental response with foods if they didn't have that experience. Yeah, and I think most of us, like he said, most of us did not grow up with this mentality, right? This flexible thinking around food is something that we've kind of had to develop as a result of being like, yeah, maybe I don't want my 14-year-old thinking they need to work out so they fit in their bathing suit. Like, especially I have a 13-year-old now And I'm like, I can't believe we are already and not not me, but like the society is already putting so much pressure on my kids.

9:36You know, I have a kid who's doing parkour. He's 11 already talking about ripped abs. Right. Does he really care about how it looks? I don't think so. But the jump from I want abs because it will actually make me be able to flip and do the things I want to do in parkour, which he's absolutely right, to now I care about how I look is not a bridge that far. It's not that far. And so I think we're having to rethink. And so if you're thinking, oh my gosh, I've been saying all the wrong things. Nah, it's fine. Truly, if you even change one thing, you're doing better, right? So it's okay for us to change.

10:18And it's Also, if you have an older kid, how powerful to be able to say, you know, this is how I used to talk about food. I used to talk about these as bad foods. But what I've learned is that all foods can be good and enjoying all foods is really healthy for us. How powerful for your kid to realize, oh, I just changed my mind. My parent just changed their mind. And now, and you can even say, hey, if you hear me saying something bad about food, let me know. which of course what kid doesn't love to tell their parents they're wrong you know so I think this sort of like and if you hear me you know I'll notice when you're doing it right you know when you're saying things positive about foods that sort of thing I think it's just a learning process and I think no matter where you're starting if you're starting with a baby and you're like hey I want to do it differently just talk about foods using their name that's so powerful, that can lead to such flexible thinking because you're just thinking about the food as it is.

11:21You're not adding on judgment, morality, and all these things. You might be doing that on the inside and your kid will probably do it because you're not the only one influencing your child. So it's silly for us to think our kids are not going to grow up and have this healthy, unhealthy category of food, but you can give them so many other categories too.

11:42Dr. Aliza Pressman:So, okay, let's like, use an example that I hear all the time, which is kind of, as you're saying, name the food. So maybe people say after dinner, and let's think about young kids. They can have a treat. They can have something sweet. They can have a dessert. They can have something that's not as good for their body because they had something, they put in things that are good for their bodies. The kinds of things that I think are very well-meaning and we talk about all the time. Pretend you're going in there and I know this isn't the best attitude to take of like fix this, but in the most gentle way possible, can you tell parents like another approach to sort of what it sounds like to name specific foods versus use a judgment?

12:23Dr. Aliza Pressman:What, you know, how we talk about those kinds of foods and how we bring them into our day-to-day consumption? Yeah. So some other options will be like you're having dinner and you really want your kid to finish dinner before they have a cookie. Just don't offer a cookie if they finish dinner. That's one option. Let's say your kid doesn't necessarily know a cookie is coming and you're like, I just need them to eat their dinner. Then don't offer a cookie. Don't make them related to each other. Don't make them related to each other. And if you're like, OK, they had enough dinner or whatever. They met their nutrient needs for the day.

13:01However you're thinking about it. And you're like, OK, I can offer them a cookie. They've got the space. We've already checked our boxes. However you're thinking about it. There's also an approach, which is just putting a little bit of dessert on their plate with dinner. And that can be a huge cultural shift and sometimes just not even appropriate for some families. For other families, they're like, I can't feel comfortable with this. Totally fine. But it is an approach that I've seen work in my house and some other houses where it's just a child-sized portion. It's not something that they could actually fill up on, something they can enjoy.

13:38And it's just there, just there with the food. You're like, this is all food. Your kid is definitely going to know that treats or candy, whatever you call it, is different than the rest of food. They may have a couple of years through preschool where they're like, oh, OK, it's all on the same plate. But then they're going to go to birthday parties and they're going to have treats and their friends are going to hype it up and, you know, coaches and teachers are going to reward them with food and all this stuff, right? It's going to get hyped up in life. So I wouldn't worry too much, but you don't have to add to that.

14:13You don't have to add to that hype, right? So you're thinking, how can I just kind of level the playing field a little bit and call foods what they are and avoid using food as a reward. So when you use it as a reward, what you're saying is, hey, cookies are really good. Dinner is not so good. Kids pick that up so fast. If you can avoid it, that can be really, really useful. And you have a lot of options. There's not one exact way to do this. But I think the more that you're just kind of talking about food as it is and relying on you being the restaurant, you know, the chef here, you're like in charge of this restaurant.

14:58Instead of telling your kid about all the things, just do it. Just serve the quote healthy food, right? Serve the foods. I like to call kind of treats and snacks and things that you might eat more than you want to have hyper palatable foods. They're just extra good. They You're just going to eat more than you even wanted to without even realizing it, right? So you're going to, as a parent, you're going to serve that less often. And you're going to serve the high fiber foods and the protein foods, all the boring foods. You're going to serve those more often. And without even saying a word, you're teaching your child what a balanced diet looks like, what your family's food pattern looks like.

15:44and you're kind of staying out of this like hyper focus on single foods or fear of single foods or that sort of thing. You're just showing them like, hey, we can have cookies, but maybe you don't serve cookies every day.

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18:06Dr. Aliza Pressman:Okay, so this brings up another challenge that I think occurs a lot, particularly as kids. I think, you know, once they're starting to get out in the world and they're in school and they have friends, they're kind of our extremes. Like parents who are so afraid to promote healthy eating as it might be misinterpreted as controlling. And if it's too controlling, then it's inflexible. And so you get like, I just leave everything out and it's up to them. Or the other side of really being very kind of restrictive and intentional about foods and watching every bite instead of enjoying a meal together.

18:46If you could help us understand where the place in the middle is that can shift if a parent is like,

18:57Dr. Aliza Pressman:oh, I definitely overcorrected on one side or the other. Yeah. What are some small ways to get it back to balanced? So I think one of the things is to remember, first of all, it's not always the what, it's the how. So are you using the exact right strategy? I don't know. And maybe it doesn't even matter. But what matters is how you do it. That matters a lot because I can say to you, you can have one piece of cake. I can just say that, just straight those words. You can have one piece of cake. I could also say, well, you can have, okay, you can have one piece of cake, right? How we say this, what does this mean?

19:42You can only have one piece of cake because you eat way too much cake. We add on these qualifications. We add on this tone. We add on our beliefs onto these words. And at the end of the day, does it matter whether they got one piece of cake or two? probably not. But what matters is how you approached it. And we're like, hey, everybody gets one piece of cake today. End of story. No drama. I didn't add any additional morality or anything like that. It just is what it is. As opposed to like, okay, we can't eat too much sugar. So everybody can only get one piece of cake. Now maybe I'm feeling a little afraid.

20:23I'm feeling anxious about cake. Maybe I'm worried. There's so many things that we can say when we add on those qualifications. So what I'd like to give parents is permission. So let's say you want permission to be like really into health and health food. Okay. I can give you that permission. What if you want permission to be like really into like whatever my kid wants to eat? My first question is what is best for you and your relationship with food? If you're struggling with your body and your relationship with food and you've got a lot of internalized weight bias and you're kind of like prone to be involved in in diet culture and maybe you've tried intuitive eating as an adult to kind of get out of diet culture if you had an eating disorder all those sorts of things you're like i kind of really want to be part of a more permissive and a more open environment right and do it that's your healthy relationship with food is going to be way better than using any quote right strategy for your kid.

21:27Let's say you're like, hey, I have some health needs. I really need to follow a more strict diet. I need this for my health. I know my child has these needs. We've noticed that my kid is reactive to certain foods. We're managing these conditions. Health is really, really important for us. Like, do it. Do it. But what matters in both of these is that we're maintaining flexibility within the bounds that we can. And we're not adding these qualifications on the add-on, the moral, the judgment, like all this sort of thing. In both cases, I think we're both striving to provide our kids with a balanced diet, right?

22:09Maybe one kid's going to get more hyperpellable food. Maybe one kid's going to get less. But how are we doing it? What are we telling kids? how are we saying day to day? Yeah, we're just going to have one cookie today. We're going to have more next week. And maybe your kid's going to be unhappy about it. Your job really isn't to keep your child happy. Like they're going to, if it's not the cookie, they're going to be unhappy about something else. Or maybe you say, yeah, you can eat as many cookies as you want. But in both cases, you're still going to be providing an example of a balanced diet as best as you can.

22:42Dr. Aliza Pressman:So I really love how you said that. And I really love the idea that different families are going to have different approaches for themselves and that there's so much flexibility there. When, okay, when do you know, like there isn't a phase that's happening for your child, but actually there's a pattern that's moving toward real pickiness. And then when do we go from picky to something even more serious? Yeah, this is so challenging. I think because when we catch these things via picky eating or kind of recognizing disordered eating at the start, if we do catch them early, we can sometimes have a little bit better chance of reducing the effects or even preventing.

23:27when my son was 10 months old i noticed the first red flags for picky eating i was like he's doing something weird with certain textures and 10 months old should typically developing 10 months olds actually shouldn't be picky at that age i was like can you show us what can you like

23:43Dr. Aliza Pressman:share with us whatever you're comfortable with what's your specific yeah so he was avoiding mushy foods and i was like that's weird also it was taking him a lot of exposures as a 10 month like 20 exposures to a food before he would eat it. And kids do need a lot of exposures, but usually at 10 months, they're very adventurous and they don't need 20 exposures. And so that kind of continued. And I was like, okay, we need to just kind of double down and bring in a more therapeutic lifestyle. Of course, I don't, is he going to become an extreme pig eater? I have no idea, but I'm going to do as many of the right things as I can in this case.

24:20And he never became an extreme pig eater. Was he picky? Oh yeah, for sure. But he was able to meet all his nutrient needs, participate in all the social things that we needed. He was fine. Just with, you know, modest changes to our lifestyle. It did not require very much lifestyle change for us other than living this kind of therapeutic food lifestyle. So I think acknowledging these little red flags is important. And we have something called the Pediatric Screener for ARFID and extreme pig eating on my website that parents can take if they're like, I just feel like something is off with their eating.

25:00We can tell you if there's some risk factors or if there's any indicators, you can get more information. And I did that because I know if parents can see that early, they can make some changes early on. Some of those things that you want to look for are this sort of sensory, like, are there certain textures that they just won't touch? Or will they not eat a certain color of vegetable? You know, I think a lot of times picky eating has been normalized. And in some ways, like, we don't want to freak parents out ever. But I also don't want to keep information from parents that they might find useful.