Tricks of the Trade: Persuading Picky Eaters

Ideas for avoiding the food fight

I significantly underestimated how much parenting would revolve around food: planning the food, buying the food, preparing the food, serving the food, and cleaning up after the food, all while thinking about the next food. On and on the nourishment merry-go-round goes.

Getting kids to eat a balanced diet can be hard! They have so many objections and excuses. My children are experts at apparently knowing they won't like something just by looking at it. Mine are also very fickle with their food opinions. The goalposts move often.

Managing normal childhood selective eating is challenging enough, but then add on only offering a specific subset of foods and that can feel even harder. In our household, everything is vegan, plus a substantial ratio is also gluten-free. Initially, this caused me some anxiety, but in time, with practice and education, I'm now much more relaxed and confident about it.

Pre-kids, I felt adequately informed about vegan nutrition. But then my child wasn't interested in the theory of a balanced plate! What I needed to learn was what I'll call 'The Sell'. I feel as though I now have an honorary degree in marketing, with the sales skills I have honed subtly convincing my children to eat over the last few years.

Just like sleeping or toilet training, eating is one of those human functions you can't actually make someone do. And often, the more parents push, the more kids resist. Something about base human nature kicks in and the more we sense pressure, the less inclined we are to do the thing. So as with all powerful sales tactics, the client needs to go for it themselves, not because they feel forced. So my husband and I cooled our jets on the interaction around food. Instead of negotiating, looming, encouraging or convincing, we pulled the handbrake on any commenting. We switched to staying nonchalant and keeping the table conversation flowing. If food does get discussed, it's about how loud the crunch of the rice crackers is, or how carrots can help us see in the dark. How weird would it be if we were dining at a restaurant and the waiter served the food, then stuck around watching us, trying to push food on us with a forced smile saying "Yum, isn't it good?! Finish it all before you're allowed to leave!". Yeah, nah.

Don't we all eat with our eyes first? So much is in the presentation. Sandwich shapers, wacky food picks, novelty vegetable cutters and interestingly shaped plates all go a long way with young kids. Colour-theme nights also go down well. Red dinners of veg meatballs in passata sauce with spaghetti, cut tomatoes, red capsicum strips and strawberries. Green dinners of tofu with pesto sauce pasta, broccoli trees, peas, green olives and avocado. Or 'Textures of Beige' as I have rebranded the array of plain white foods so many kids embrace which is mostly carbs but plus some tofu or hummus and sauerkraut.

I do love that my smalls (and hopefully yours) are very open-minded about weird flavour combinations. This enables my cop out dinner when I need to do groceries. 'Plate of little things' is just a snack platter of all sorts of odd bites that we eat as picnics in the lounge. It's very exciting you see not to be at the normal kitchen table, but to be on a blanket on the floor.

I'm also from the cover all your bases school. Per universal recommendations, I try to offer my kids various foods in their whole (recognisable) form, but also, sometimes I just want the little muppets to ingest it. This means I engage in goods by stealth. Smoothies galore. Muffins with carrots or zucchini in. Pasta sauces with vegetables blitzed through. Side note: pasta sauce is only severed separately for autonomous dipping in our house. DefCon 1 if I was to mix it through.

The responsibility split in our house is the parents choose the foods on offer and the child decides what and how much to eat. I'm not a short-order chef so I don't indulge a stream of requests. Each family-style meal is served as a fixed menu offering with more servings always avail, but no other options. I include a few safe foods on the plate that I am confident they will eat, then some other items for new exposures, working towards consumption. It's face-meltingly frustrating how often a new food might need to be offered before it's approved, but it works. We don't push for cleared, finished plates, instead promote a "listen to your body" narrative where we work on learning the feelings around hunger versus being full.

Some age-old advice that still holds for me is involving smalls in grocery shopping and food prep. Watching them attempt to slice mushrooms with a dull knife makes me want to scream inside, but I see the results in consistent kitchen work exposure. Mine are also more likely to snack on a new food when it's mid-prep. I am a bit proud my oldest (4.5) can now prepare pikelet batter on her own. But the learning process was slooooow. Is it wildly inefficient to involve them? Yes. But, does it help pique their interest in their food? Also yes.

Some Instagram accounts I follow that help support me with vegan meal inspiration, information about plant-based diets for kids or tactics for supporting general positive eating behaviours include Vegan.Kids.Nutrition, PlantBasedJuniors and Kids.Eat.In.Color.

In my parenting journey, I've learned that 'The Sell' is not about making my children eat, but that winning at mealtimes looks like empowering them to make their own choices, understand their own bodies and explore vegan food. By incorporating fun presentations and involving them in the process, I'm trying to feed their curiosity and willingness to try new foods, as much as actually fill their puku.

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