Over Three Less-Than-Amazing Ways to Show a Picky Eater That Eating Can Be Fun

Jul 10, 2013 by

From an amazing speech-language pathologist who treats children with feeding issues

I recently interviewed Christie Olguin,  CCC-SLP (Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech-Language Pathology) and clinic director at ABILITY Pediatric Therapy in San Antonio.

Leading over 100 therapists, Christie personally works mainly with kids with food aversion. She’s helped many severe cases overcome problem eating.

One idea that this expert in solving picky eating made clear to me is that enjoyment matters! Enjoyment is essential! Enjoyment in eating is healthy. It’s not a luxury or a frivolous frill. It’s not an indulgent distraction from the dread duty of getting used to eating what’s good for you. Pleasure in eating may be the most important lesson to teach a picky eater.

That day, Christie was working with an 11-month-old, Grant, who is averse to food. Grant is food averse for several reasons.

Grant learned early that eating meant pain from acid reflux. He was diagnosed…

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It Doesn’t Matter if She Likes Brocoli, As Long As She Eats It. Or Does It?

Mar 12, 2013 by

How much good we get out of our food depends a lot on how much we enjoy it, one study suggests.

When researchers fed a spicy Thai dish to a group of Swedish women and to a group of Thai women, the Thai women liked the dish more and absorbed more iron from it than did the Swedes.

Then when both groups were fed a Swedish dish, the Swedish women liked the dish more and also absorbed more iron from their meal than the Thai women did, recounts Barry Glassner in his 2007 book The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat.

Perhaps even more interestingly, when a meal was blended up into an unappealing mush, even the  women who had enjoyed the original meal got less out of it. And when both groups were then fed a very good-for-you but sticky and unsavory paste, none…

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Safety in Numbers: The Perfect Insurance Against Food Worries

Dec 7, 2008 by

The Experts tell us, don’t eat potatoes. Don’t eat eggs. Don’t eat red meat. Don’t ingest dairy, especially butter. Just when you think you’re doing the right thing as a parent, The Experts change their minds. How can we ever really know what we should be feeding our kids?

In The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat, author Barry Glassner gives away the first two right answers to our question in his title. According to Glassner, another primary guideline in feeding kids—regardless of what foods The Experts decide to condemn or endorse—is variety.

Eating the widest possible variety of foods is “good insurance,” Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and senior lecturer at Harvard…

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It Doesn't Matter if She Likes Broccoli, As Long As She Eats It. Or Does It?

Dec 6, 2008 by

How much good we get out of our food depends a lot on how much we enjoy it, one study suggests.

When researchers fed a spicy Thai dish to a group of Swedish women and to a group of Thai women, the Thai women liked the dish more and absorbed more iron from it than did the Swedes.  Then when both groups were fed a Swedish dish, the Swedish women liked the dish more and also absorbed more iron from their meal than the Thai women, recounts Barry Glassner in his 2007 book The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat.

Even more interestingly, both groups were then fed a very good-for-you but sticky…

read more