Very picky eater

[OneUniqueNavyCritic]

Hi
I am very concerned about my 3 year old diet and her refusal to try new food . This is what she eats normally This is what my 3 year old eats Multiple vegetables (including stronger flavors like rocket, beetroot, seaweed, broccoli)

• Several fruits banana apples strawberries and pears big oranges
• Different protein sources (chicken, fish cakes, lentils, quorn meatballs , yogurt, nut yogurt)
• Mixed dishes and sauces (lentil ragù, satay sauce, lasagna) (crunchy with olive oil crackers, soup, hummus, yogurt, toast, celery and fennel , fortified granola with almonds

doesn't eat eggs , cheese or beans and still gag if she eats food that don’t agree with her

It’s just they are so crunchy you would definitely need teeth.

I wonder if she means that all the child consumes orally is some chips, pear and apple, meaning the child needs an alternative means of feeding for the majority of their nutrition, such as a feeding tube.

OP, your 3 year olds diet sounds great.

OP, is there something specific that you want your child to eat?

My friend’s son ate cracottes and green apples only for about 18 months. He ended up studying Biology at Oxford.

That diet looks fine.

Well I don't know about anyone else but I keep my teeth in my mouth.

All my kids hate chips 🤣

Most of his nutrition comes from a feeding tube

I have come to do that yes 😊 I am just worried that she seems to be done after a few spoonful of pasta 😊

I always try to expose her to new things every day like new fruits and veggies which she accepts but more complex dishes like steak or plain fish or simply eggs are big no ..

You have a 3 year old who eats fennel and beetroot, what are you worrying about? My DP refuses fennel (just wrong) and beetroot (the devil's root that tastes of dirt apparently)😀
I'm with your daughter on the eggs and cheese though, both vile.

Her diet is more than fine!
Toddlers generally like familiar food. As long as you have 3 or 4 meals you can offer in rotation and maybe vary with familiar veg/carbs she's doing great. Offer new foods alongside.
It's a very normal phase of development to become suspicious of new foods. Not a failing.

Is this a joke thread?

My (almost) 2 year old is extremely picky, he eats:

• weetabix
• yoghurt
• peanut butter on toast
• pasta in tomato sauce
• cheese (has to be grated cheddar and served with pasta).
• banana

He also eats 3 baby snacks - rice cakes, soft biscotti (kiddylicious or lidl) and melty sticks.

We're under referral to eating disorder team at GOSH. He can go months without trying a new food. If he ate a fraction of what your 3 year old eats I'd be ecstatic.

It is also the amount of food she eats .. like after a few bites she is done .. we don’t do chips , processed food ( occasionally treats )

That’s not picky. That’s someone with a small appetite that snacks.

She eats a wide variety of foods, she is not a picky/fussy eater. She doesn't have to like everything, we all have foods we dislike.

'it is just she asks to try new things and then after 1 bite she doesn’t want them anymore and it is such a waste of food'

How is food being wasted unless you're putting a lot of the new food on her plate? Give her a meal she normally has and add a tiny amount of the new food so she can try it, or let her taste the new food from your plate. Don't pressure her to eat certain foods, as others have said, relax!

'It is also the amount of food she eats .. like after a few bites she is done '

That doesn't make her a picky eater either. So she doesn't want to eat a large amount at once, that's ok.

How on earth are you deriving “very picky eater” from a child who eat a wide variety of foods and is willing to try a bite of lots of things ?

are you deranged ?

or do you mean picky in the sense of “picky bits”?

Yeah that's an amazing diet for a 3 year old. Mine literally eats cucumber, pepper, carrots, apples, grapes, cheese, any biscuits and cakes. That's it. Now that's a fussy eater. Yours is fine

Oh it's you again. Back to make those of us with actual picky eaters feel like absolute shit. What is it you get out of making these posts OP?

Some weird stealth bragging maybe. I didn't realise she was a regular poster. What else has she posted about?

Literally the exact same topic, her allegedly picky eater who actually eats brilliantly. I keep clicking on the posts because I have a three year old who does have a very restricted diet so am looking for advice/support. So you can imagine how helpful I find these posts 🙄

Oh right. Completely empathise. I've got a 3 year old who I'm pretty sure has ARFID. He's currently waiting for assessment for autism. So I always look out for picky eater advice too😊

I totally understand and know about a little bit about picky eaters from my own experience as a mom. I even went to a course for parents about it. They said ‘put healthy food in front of them and that’s your job done’ don’t be chasing them trying to spoon food in their mouth, don’t be cooking 5 different meals, do what you need to do and your job is done. It really helped me enormously as I had been trying everything and was really stressing about it.

He is an adult now and eats loads of things. Praise the Lord.

There was one mum at the group, her son ate one type of one Lidl yogurt and that’s it. Absolutely nothing else, EVER, for years and she was terrified they would change it or change the label and her son would actually die of hunger. The people doing the course completely understood.
Some people just do not get it, I remember a public health nurse saying to me ‘just leave a selection of cucumber and tomatoes etc and snacks on the table and let him pick away’ I was thinking, ‘you don’t understand he would actually die of hunger than put any of that near his mouth?’

anyway as I said it all turned out ok in time, but some people have been to Vegas and some just have not, lucky them.

My DD used to restrict her diet when she was little and would only eat ready salted crisps, wafer thin ham and cherry tomatoes. I had the health visitor and community dietician involved and she was underweight for ages. She was EBF and I was so smug before she was weaned!

I'm happy to say that the situation resolved once she went to school, and now adult, lives and works in South East Asia, where being a picky eater isn't really possible.