Lesson 8 – Making meals toddler-friendly without catering

What is a toddler-friendly meal?

When you think of a “toddler-friendly” meal, what comes to mind? Most people think of a “toddler-friendly” meal as a meal containing typical snack or “kid-food” like Macaroni & cheese, chicken nuggets and applesauce. Perhaps string cheese, cantaloupe chunks and cut-up toast? Maybe you think of foods that you’d be forced to exclude like salmon, brussels sprouts, spinach salad, spicy enchiladas or most things you and your partner enjoy.

We want you to know that any meal can become “toddler-friendly” with some minor adjustments. Whether you are a foodie who enjoys spending hours in the kitchen preparing gourmet vegan delicacies from local, organic ingredients or you are a stove-a-phobe who prefers preparing food from boxes—or somewhere in between—you don’t have to double your kitchen time to make simple family meals work. You can enjoy your favorite entrees and sides without alienating your toddler or having a food fight.

Here are some steps you can take to make meals in your house toddler-friendly.

Step 1. Serve a Safe Food
Think of a meal you love, that your toddler hasn’t yet touched. You can plan to include that meal soon and with confidence by providing a safety net that includes 1-2 foods that you know your toddler readily accepts. Such a safe food might include, but is not limited to: bread & butter, a large bowl of a preferred fruit, a stack of tortillas, a bowl of chips or crackers. For some kids it may be a favorite vegetable, chicken or meatballs. If the meal calls for it and your child enjoys it, plain rice or pasta works well for many children.

It might mean keeping some of the meat or chicken unsauced and also offering some sauce on the side. Few of these foods require much additional kitchen time, but give your child something simple and non-scary to eat when they are wary of the rest of the offerings. This isn’t food you give just to your child, but food that is served on the table for all—in enough quantity that everyone can get their fill—this isn’t always possible with meat/poultry as easily as it is with starches because starches are less expensive.

Step 2. Stay away from catering
Our main caveat is that you don’t make an alternate entree for any one person. In other words, don’t set out a PB+J sandwich for your picky one when you’re having lasagna. Don’t bake chicken nuggets when everyone else is having chicken fettuccine alfredo. That amounts to short-order cooking and will hold your child back in her learning. Why branch out if she doesn’t have to?

Additionally, don’t feel pressured to provide extensive variety with the safe food. If your daughter loves bread and will eat it readily when other things are less appetizing, keep putting bread out. An exception to the ‘alternate’ entree, would be when eating out at a restaurant—but that’s up to you.

Also one thing Adina has done is combine two different foods in a way that still allows sharing and doesn’t hint to the child that his eating is ‘different.’ She did this for lunch one day by making both PB+J and cheese-tomato sandwiches, but cutting them all into fourths and putting them all one one serving platter. Then each person could try one or the other or both—there was no distinction between the “kid sandwiches” and “adult sandwiches.”

Step 3. Deconstruct Meals
Thinking of serving tortilla soup tonight? Serve the soup, but also add tortilla chips, avocado, and other component parts on a platter separately. Your son will have the opportunity to taste the soup, if he is feeling curious, but can also eat individual parts without a lot of extra work on your part. You’ll all be sharing the same meal! See below an example of Make Your Own Quesadilla Night in Natalia’s house.

This can be done with many other foods too:
— Sandwich bar
— Baked potato bar
— Make your own pizza night
— Salad bar
— Taco night

Step 4. Don’t Make “Perfect” the Enemy of the Good Enough – (a.k.a. be willing to compromise)
In the world of nutrition and health there are a lot of gray areas. Each of us in this class (teachers or students) would probably disagree on some specifics about what people should or should not eat. We have vegans, semi-vegetarians, and omnivores amongst us. When a way of eating represents a deeply held moral or ethical belief, we would be hard-pressed to try to sway you. We want to respect your food values.

But sometimes ideals are just that…ideals. Sometimes food ideals can stand between you and a pleasant family meal and not just the pleasant family meal but the gradual progress in your child’s learning to accept new foods—including the foods of your ideals.

When you don’t meet your ideals it’s easy to feel guilty or throw in the towel and think it’s completely black and white: either Kraft’s Mac & Cheese that your kids will eat or 90 minutes in the kitchen with fussy results.

Very often when dietitians preach “family meals” what’s decoded by listeners (or readers) is an imperative to serve only foods according to a set of ideals (organic? low fat? Michael Pollan friendly? you name it). But what we really, truly mean is find a way to get food on the table that makes it worth the work and share that food—whatever it may be.

Remember the family meal is not just about food. And if one of your goals is to increase your child’s food repertoire it is counterproductive to create such tall barriers to getting food on the table that you can’t get food on the table. It is unfair to expect a child to not eat differently than you if he is fed differently than you. It sends mixed messages. Having influence is extremely difficult if parents don’t eat together with their kids.  

Are there also foods that you avoid but are willing to feed to your child? Consider including these foods in the family menu—you can always add sides (if it is an entree) or use it as a side to your favorite entree. If you’re not allergic to it and doesn’t violate an ethical or moral dietary rule you follow, it’s worth including it, building on the influence of the other foods included on the table. It’s not catering if you aren’t cooking an alternate entree. Think of dinner rolls. They are really easy to like, but few kids will eat only that meal after meal after meal…ad infinitum.

So instead of letting the barriers to a perfect meal stop you from eating together, consider your food values and beliefs and see if there isn’t a place to make a compromise for the sake of growing together in your enjoyment of good food and good company.

Step 5. Serve dessert WITH the meal, not after

In most households, dessert is served at the end of the meal.  When everyone has gotten their fill of the main course and sides and is patting his full tummy in satisfaction, the hostess clears the table, vanishes into the kitchen, and then reappears flashing a proud smile as she presents…DESSERT:  The decadent reward for getting full on nutrition!  The hard work is done, you may now enjoy a moment of pleasure.

Not teaching that lesson is one reason why we serve dessert with the meal in our houses.  We don’t want to teach the unintended lesson that dessert is for full bellies.  We want our children to stay tuned in to their signals of fullness and satisfaction.  Sweets are desirable enough to children that they can learn to override their fullness if they have to do it to get cookies – especially if cookies are scarce.

A small study in Appetite demonstrated that kids will eat more calories in order to squeeze in dessert if it was served at the end of the meal.  The study authors interpreted the results as a way to help kids eat fewer calories.

What we take from this is that the way we feed our kids can either support their natural self-regulation and ability to respect their fullness or it can teach them to overeat to get what they really want.  That’s something else we don’t want to teach: that the meal should be considered ‘work’ while the dessert is elevated to a higher, more privileged status.

When it comes to picky eaters it is all too easy to slip into the dessert-for-broccoli power struggle: Okay, darling, eat another bite of your chicken and two more bites of your broccoli and then you can have dessert.  We see this happen in the families who come to us for nutrition counseling.

We see it happen with picky eaters whose parents are worried because of their low weight and with picky eaters whose parents are concerned because of their higher weight.  It’s not working for either group.  Broccoli is wonderful!  Chicken is wonderful!  Dessert is wonderful!  Yet we certainly make a big deal out of sweets.  When dessert is a reward it takes on more power.  Kids are already naturally drawn to strong sweet flavors, we don’t need to make those sweet flavors into a bigger deal.  Plus bribery & coercion as well as other types of pressuring kids to eat typically makes them eat worse, not better.

Discussion:  Please share 3 things you can  change for making meals more toddler-friendly in YOUR household.