Picky Eaters (7 years & older): How to Get your Kids to Eat New Foods

How to get kids to eat new foods when they are selective eaters?

Is your child a picky eater? Do you often hear: “I don’t like it” “Ew” “Yucky”? Are you running out of ideas on how to get your kids to eat new foods?

You have probably been hoping the fussiness will subside as your child ages.

I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is that your expectations are based on scientific facts. As kids get older, they acquire a taste for new foods, textures, cooking methods, and smells.

But there is bad news, too. Some kids are very fussy eaters all the way through to adulthood. There may be lots of reasons: personal preferences, family eating habits, sensory aversions, or some food or health-related difficulties that may need to be addressed.

Today, I am writing for those parents whose kids plainly refuse to try new foods. And I will share a new and powerful tool that is a game changer for us.

All the recommendations mentioned below are based on my consultation with our dietician to address “picky eating” in kids older than 7 years old.

But let’s start with the basics and try to answer some important questions:

• Is it normal for my child to reject some foods?
• What are the most common food-related issues in childhood?
• Healthy eating habits
• General Tips for Picky Eaters
• How to get older kids to eat new foods (aged 7 and older): A GAME-CHANGING TOOL!
  • My Food Journal: A workbook for selective eaters 

My Child Rejects Some Foods. Is it normal?

When you first started introducing new foods and textures to your babies you probably hoped this journey would be finished by the time they turned three and were able to eat the same as the adults.

I may be about to burst a new parents’ bubble.

Being able to eat the same as the adults is an amazing milestone in our kids’ development.

But there is still a lot of work to do. The learning process extends approximately until they turn 12 years old.

During this journey, it is quite usual for kids to show some food preferences and rejections (or aversions). Between the ages of 7 and 12, they progressively grow out of those food rejections and would develop their personal tastes and preferences.

Food rejections in kids follow some common patterns at certain ages:

• 2.5  years old         Vegetables
• 6 years old             Some textures / Cooked vegetables
• 7-9 years old         Some smells and types of cooking
• 10-12 years old     Fewer food rejections /clearly defined.

Common Eating Problems in Older Kids

Addressing feeding difficulties in children is a complex issue that can’t be fully covered in a single post. These difficulties can manifest in various forms, such as limited appetite, selective eating, or fear of feeding. While these classifications seem straightforward, it’s important to note that what parents often perceive as picky eating could, in fact, be normal eating behavior for a child’s developmental stage.

Furthermore, underlying causes of feeding difficulties can be quite diverse. Some are organic, including issues related to structural anomalies, gastrointestinal problems, cardiorespiratory conditions, or neurological factors. Another potential factor is neophobia, which is a fear of new foods and is a common phase in child development but can become more pronounced in certain cases.

Additionally, the feeding style adopted by parents can significantly influence a child’s eating behaviors. How parents present food, their reactions to a child’s eating habits, and the mealtime environment they create can all impact a child’s willingness to eat and try new foods.

Source: A Practical Approach to Classifying and Managing Feeding Difficulties

If you’re concerned about your child’s eating habits, it’s essential to consult with a health professional who can help identify any underlying issues and provide tailored advice for your situation. Treatment options for these issues might include consulting with health professionals like pediatricians, nutritionists, and osteopaths, who offer unique insights and therapies that can alleviate physical discomfort associated with eating.

Some eating behaviors are a concern for parents and turn meals into a stressful family time.

Kids struggling with food may present one or more of the following feeding issues:

• eating speed (too fast or too slow)
• food quantities (too much or too little)
• not eating some food groups (e.g.vegetables and fruits)
• refusing some types of food preparation (e.g. roasted, boiled, fried )
• refusing some textures (e.g. mashed)

Healthy Eating Guidelines

A healthy eating pattern should include:

• A variety of vegetables from all of the subgroups –dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other
• Fruits
• Grains (at least half of them being whole grains)
• Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages
• A variety of protein foods (seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes –beans  and peas –and nuts, seeds, and soy products)
• Oils (around 5 teaspoons per day)

while limiting saturated fats and trans fats, added sugars, and sodium (salt).

Since I’m writing about kids and food, I felt I needed to touch upon the topic of healthy eating. But this is not my main topic today, so for any further information, I will link to the 8^thEdition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020 here.

My focus today is to provide you with some tools that will help you convince your kids to try new foods.

General Tips for Picky Eaters

I am going to assume that you have already taken care of all the environmental issues that may be affecting your kid’s eating habits. But a friendly reminder of best practices won´t hurt anybody, will it? ?

General Tips for Good Eating Routines:

• Stick to a routine: serve meals at similar times every day
• Don’t allow snacking between meals
• Set a good example by eating a variety of healthy foods
• Avoid fizzy drinks that will fill your kids’ tummies
• Avoid distractions during meal times: no watching t.v, playing with phones /tablets, or any other distractions

How to Get Older Kids to Eat New Foods: A Game-Changing Strategy

As our dietician put it, once kids are older than 7, you need their commitment so that they start trying new foods. It just won’t happen by trying to force them to eat.

Some kids plainly refuse to try any new foods. Experiencing an unknown flavor (or smell) may feel too off-putting.

In this game-changing strategy, we will start by experiencing our food through our senses before we actually proceed to eat that new food.

Some basic rules before you start:

You, as a parent, will commit to:

• not force your child to eat new foods

Your child will commit to:

• make his own choices of new foods that he will attempt to try
• start a process to gradually start interacting with those foods she has chosen

Interacting with our food with all our senses:

For each new food that your kid decides to try there will be a number of steps:

1. Look at the new food
2. Touch the food
3. Smell the food
4. Bite the food and spit it out
5. Chew the food and spit it out
6. Chew the food and swallow it

Your child will decide how fast he wants to go through this process. Don’t push him. Once she is ready to move to the next level she will do it.

Giving new foods a good chance to make it into our diet:

Once your child has reached the point of being able to chew and swallow that new food a new process starts.

When we try new flavors or textures, it may take some time to get used to them before we actually start enjoying them.

Chances are, your kid will not give a fair chance to those new foods unless we approach in a structured way. In the program we are currently working on, our kids have to try a new food 15 times before they make their final decision.

A food journal comes very handy in this type of situation.

A food journal will help your child:

• record his experiences with new tastes, smells, and new sensations
• keep track of the number of time she tries a new food group
• take ownership of this project, feel proactive and in control
• become more aware of the importance of food and expanding their food repertoire
• help her make an informed and fair decision about adding a specific new food to her diet

We are currently working through a series of new foods that I don’t think my child would ever have considered unless she had the motivation of filling in her food journal.

Pss, this is NOT an excuse to not have dinner! We are only talking about new foods here.

I know, getting a picky eater to try new things is just PRICELESS!

Feeding Issues: Further Reading and Resources