[00:00:00] Gretchen Roe: I am a mom of young kids. How do I get them to try different things?

[00:00:07] Katie Kimball: Don’t try to get them to try different things. That’s the thing: in the question is a problem; you’re asking the wrong question because it’s not your job to get a piece of food past your child’s lips; it’s your job to create an environment in which they can build a healthy relationship with food.

[music]

[00:00:31] Gretchen: Good afternoon, everyone. I’m so excited today on the Demme Learning Show to host Katie Kimball. We had a conversation about this conversation months and months ago, and this is really a conversation that I have been looking forward to because building a healthy relationship with food is so difficult for so many parents. I know adults that don’t have a healthy relationship with food. I, unfortunately, have too healthy a relationship with food. I love to cook. I love to eat. I love to entertain. I’m so excited to have Katie here to talk to you all today. I’m going to let Katie introduce herself, and then we’ll just take it from there. Katie?

[00:01:11] Katie: Well, thank you, Gretchen. I’ve been online for 17 years now. I started helping moms stay healthy without going crazy, and just the old-school blogging world, talking about nutrition and how do you figure out how you cut through all the noise of what’s healthy and what’s not? How do you protect your budget and your time and your nutrition at the same time?

I always had this vision of a mom with her four arms and legs being pulled in different directions, like time, money, nutrition, environment. That’s what I did, and then shifted into teaching kids to cook through a series of events. Now I run Raising Healthy Families, which is just an umbrella for healthy kids, for raising healthy, independent future adults. There, I have a podcast, have a book coming out on picky eating called The Picky Eater Playbook, and we run life skills workshops. When you’re online for 17 years, you end up just, “Let’s do this, let’s do this.” Personally, I have a husband of 23 years and 4 kids, ages 11, 15, 18, and 21.

[00:02:15] Gretchen: Wow, my goodness. 11 to 21, those are the interesting ages. Those are my favorite ages. I loved my kids at every age, but my teenagers were really my favorites. That’s pretty amazing. Katie, 17 years ago, what vision did you have that brought us here today? How did this happen?

[00:02:41] Katie: I think most people come out of their own struggles and then want to help others through theirs. I was raised; I call my mom a hybrid cook. She cooked a lot from scratch, but she also used a lot of processed ingredients in her recipes. Her homemade spaghetti sauce used two cans of cream of tomato soup, like Kimball’s. It was this funny hybrid. I didn’t know how to listen to my body. I didn’t know anything about food allergies. I didn’t know anything about nutrition.

When we were pregnant with our first, that was my first eye-opening moment that what I eat matters a lot, and what I put in an 8-pound baby’s mouth matters a lot, a lot, a lot. I made all the mistakes in the kitchen. I felt like I was spending so much time at the cutting board. I’m trained as a teacher, so the brain and the heart of the teacher never stops going. I just thought, “Oh, how can I teach what I’m learning here to other moms to speed their path up and reduce the roadblocks and the bumps in the road?” That’s how I ended up writing online, and then just I’m continually learning and shifting.

[00:03:54] Gretchen: That’s amazing. Would you say that you enjoy cooking, or is it a means to an end? I have a friend who is a chef, and she says when she’s not at the restaurant, she’s going to eat a box of crackers and cheese. She’s like, it’s like two personas for her.

[00:04:15] Katie: I bet.

[00:04:15] Gretchen: Is it all one for you?

[00:04:18] Katie: It’s a whole menagerie, and it’s going to depend on the day. I think I feel, about cooking, for me, it’s more of a vocation. If you say to a mom, “Do you enjoy motherhood, or is it more of a struggle?” Depends on the minute.

[00:04:32] Gretchen: [laughs] That could change in a five-minute period of time, yes.

[00:04:37] Katie: Right? I think that’s a– but you see it as a gift and a service and a calling. I really do feel, for me, about food in that way, in that sometimes I literally enjoy it; sometimes it’s just what I really need to do, or what I feel that my food values say I want to do, to feed my kids something other than a box of crackers or a bowl of cereal. It’s just part of my mothering. When your kid is sick and your doctor googling everything, it’s not like it’s fun, but it’s so important, and it’s so meaningful. For me, feeding my family real whole foods and trying to get them nourished and trying to pass on that idea of owning their health to them is meaningful, which makes it good.

[00:05:28] Gretchen: I laugh because I think I probably did a really good and a really bad thing. I taught all of my kids to cook. Your big fourth birthday present was you came to the kitchen, and I taught you how to scramble eggs on a gas stove yourself.

[00:05:43] Katie: Oh, that’s so awesome. Yes.

[00:05:47] Gretchen: All of my kids eat a wide variety of things, and nobody complains, but I think I have more friends whose kids struggle with food and struggle with their relationship to food, and this is such a puzzle for parents. We don’t know how to solve the puzzle, so I’m hoping you can help inform us, maybe a little bit of how we can do this more gently.

[00:06:15] Katie: I think at minimum today with that puzzle, we can sort out like, “Here are the edge pieces. Here’s the middle. Let’s put the clouds together,” because every child is so unique. We won’t be able to complete the puzzle, but I’m going to give you a lot of direction today for sure.

[00:06:30] Gretchen: Okay. All right. I am a mom of young kids. How do I get them to try different things?

[00:06:38] Katie: Don’t try to get them to try different things. That’s the thing: in the question is a problem; you’re asking the wrong question because it’s not your job to get a piece of food past your child’s lips; it’s your job to create an environment in which they can build a healthy relationship with food. Again, how do I get my kid to be friends with other kids? You know what I’m saying? You can’t say, “Julie, you’re going to be friends with Johnny now.” Maybe at two, kind of, but if they’re like eight.

[00:07:11] Gretchen: Don’t bonk Johnny on the head. Right. [laughs]

[00:07:13] Katie: Right. If they are their own people by about six or so, you can put kids together; you can give them some games; you can teach them how to play together, but you can’t force a friendship, and it’s the same thing with food. You can’t force a friendship with food. That’s what we just want to make sure. Especially with young children, serving a variety is a key, critical step number one, and just constantly, every day, serving a variety.

They don’t like it; they don’t eat it? No worries. You just keep doing it. With a growth mindset and growth language, “Oh, you don’t enjoy that today? That’s okay. Maybe you will tomorrow. Your taste buds aren’t grown up yet.” We really, really, really want to help our children to avoid that fixed mindset of, “I don’t like vegetables. I don’t like watermelon. I don’t like broccoli.” Whatever it is, that really can’t be completely true, because that child has not tried all the ways in which broccoli can be prepared, right?

Every watermelon is so different. You can get a bum one; you can get one that’s overripe, and you can get the perfect, sweet, melt-your-knees, buckle-your-knees watermelon. That’s the kind of conversations, especially with young children. We got to serve that variety. We got to talk about food and how it’s different, and not moral values, not words like “good” and “bad” or “healthy” and “unhealthy,” but just, “Wow, this is crunchy. This is so juicy. This one’s sweet. Oh, that one bit my tongue. That was so sour or so bitter,” and then pointing out how different things are.

I tell a story in the book, The Picky Eater Playbook, about my youngest. He was about eight at the time. He came up to me looking all morose, and he had not touched his main course, which happened to be air-fried chicken wings, kind of bar food in a way, right? Yes, a lot of people would like that. He said, “I knew you would want to take one, so I put it on my plate, but I didn’t eat it because I don’t like chicken.” For me, that’s my cue. “Uh-oh, I don’t like chicken.”

I said, “Well, remember when we have barbecue chicken, which is like slow-cooker, falling-apart, shredded. Do you like that barbecue chicken and rice?” He said, “Oh, yes, I do like that, actually.” “Oh, okay.” It’s my job as the mom to widen his mind and show him, like, “This crunchy chicken on the bone wasn’t your thing today. It’s hard to chew, buddy. I get it. Dad doesn’t like eating meat off the bone either. It’s so much work, but you don’t need to say, ‘I don’t like chicken because chicken comes in lots of different ways.’ Thank you for taking this taster. Maybe someday you’ll like it.” His whole being sort of settled because he was so worried that, in fact–

[00:10:07] Gretchen: He was going to be in trouble, right?

[00:10:10] Katie: Well, actually, I forgot the important line as he said, “I don’t like chicken. Am I a picky eater?” He was actually on the worry bus, worrying that he was a picky eater because he didn’t eat any pork.

[00:10:21] Gretchen: Oh, how interesting. In his head, not liking something was a quick– and I guess I could see making that connection at this age.

[00:10:32] Katie: Especially the main course. You don’t eat the main course.

[00:10:34] Gretchen: Especially if that’s what mom does for a living.

[laughter]

[00:10:37] Katie: Yes. I don’t know if he was aware of that at the time. To wrap it up, for the young children, we got to serve a variety; we got to think about creating a really positive environment where we can talk about food, we can like it, we can not like it, we can eat it or not eat it. We’re going to be polite. It doesn’t mean that you have to allow your four-year-old to say, “Ew, gross.” That’s a whole separate issue, right? That’s parental discipline and respect for the person who made the food. That can get really mixed up sometimes in our heads, which is why food is so complicated.

[00:11:12] Gretchen: I like the way that you said what you did about “Maybe try it another time.” Repeat to me how you said that because I think that’s so valuable. That’s such a valuable sentence for a parent to have in their hip pocket.

[00:11:27] Katie: Yes. I would say, “Oh, that’s okay. It’s not your favorite today. Maybe you’ll like it next time, or maybe you’ll like it prepared in a different way.” I love with kids saying, “Your taste buds aren’t grown up yet.” There’s a little splash of reverse psychology there because kids want to grow up. It’s like, “It’s okay. Your taste buds aren’t grown up yet.” I hear more parents tell me that if they say, “Oh, feta cheese, that’s really tangy. It’s kind of an adult flavor.” The kids are like, “I would like to taste that feta cheese now,” because of that reverse psychology impact, right?

[00:11:59] Gretchen: Sure.

[00:11:59] Katie: Because they want to be grown up, and they’re like, “Darn,” or, “Oh, Mom and Dad are eating steak, but we made chicken nuggets for the kids because steak is a grown-up food,” and then the kids are ooching on the parent’s laugh and noshing on their steaks. They’re like, “Oh, this is good and bad. I wanted that steak, but I’m glad my kid’s trying something new.” That’s helpful.

[00:12:20] Gretchen: Katie, we had a great question, which is: how do you help a child try a new food?

[00:12:25] Katie: How do you?

[00:12:29] Gretchen: This is a parenting fail on my part. She eats strawberries now as an adult. One of my children was like, “Oh, no, uh-uh.” It was the texture thing. She was probably seven or eight. I backed her into the corner of the kitchen and insisted that she eat a sliver of strawberry, and I made sure that that sliver was the juiciest, most amazing-tasting strawberry. Eventually, she came to enjoy strawberries. Now, she felt the same way about tomatoes. She’s 34, still won’t eat an uncooked tomato. [laughs] How do you do this with more grace than, obviously, I brought to the table in that instance?

[00:13:14] Katie: We do want to be really cautious about not requiring a bite. This is very contentious. Many, many families have a just-try-one-bite rule or just-try-three-bites, whatever. There’s different variations. For a lot of kids, it will work. They will take the one bite, and the parents will tell me, “But look, Katie, it has expanded their palate. They would never try things if I didn’t require it.”

There’s some problems in the just-try-one-bite rule, and one of them is that sometimes it works until it doesn’t, and the other is that it really crosses lines when it comes to the autonomy of the child and their own bodies. Ellyn Satter is a sociologist who describes the division of responsibility in that this is a very common foundational when it comes to eating and feeding. What I like about it is she didn’t create it; she just observed, like, “Here’s how humans are created. Here’s how the parent-child dynamic works in a respectful relationship.”

She gives three jobs to the child and two jobs to the adult. No, got that backward. Three jobs to the adult, two jobs to the child. Sorry. The three jobs of the adult are to choose what is served, which we just talked about, a wide variety, right? To choose when food is served, and that’s really important because we really can’t have kids eating all day long; they would never learn how to get hungry; they would never eat their dinners, right? And where the food is served, which is the whole thing, ideally at the family table. That’s up for discussion.

The adult chooses what, when, and where, and then that’s it. Then the child’s responsibility takes over, and the child chooses whether they eat at all, and if they do eat, how much. What happens if we cross lanes in either direction, meaning you let the child dictate what is served? “I’ll only eat mac and cheese. You better serve me mac and cheese.” Not that kids are actually saying that, but parents sometimes behave as if they are. They short-order.

[00:15:14] Gretchen: Sure.

[00:15:15] Katie: They say, “Urgh, my kid will only eat chicken nugs. Guess I got to serve it.” Ooh, no. That’s not the child’s job, right?

[00:15:23] Gretchen: Right.

[00:15:23] Katie: When we cross those lanes, that’s where we end up sliding into bad habits and causing problems. Similarly, if we step into the child’s lane and we say, “You have to try one bite,” here’s what we have to do: we have to follow that to the end. For compliant children, like I said, yes, sure, sometimes “it works,” but at a point when it doesn’t, or for a child for whom it will never work, for whatever reason, maybe there’s something going on in their body that’s really saying no to food; maybe they’re just very, very stubborn or strong-willed, and they’re getting in power struggles about everything, and they’re, of course, going to power-struggle about food. When you say, as a parent, “You must take one bite,” and the child says no and continues to say no, the only option is to literally force-feed a child. I know you did it with the strawberry, but you’re regretting it.

[00:16:19] Gretchen: Yes. She teases me. She’s 34 and still remembers, and teases me a little bit about it now.

[00:16:26] Katie: Right. I think most of us would go, “Okay, yes, what if I had to do that every night, and hold their nose, and stuff it down?” We’re really being disrespectful at that point, and we’re teaching the child that he or she does not have autonomy over their body, which extrapolates into a lot of other areas. We really just want to be cautious there. If you can’t follow through on one bite, you can’t say the rule, because then kids know that you’re a mom who doesn’t actually do what she says she’ll do. You know what I mean? Yes.

How do you get a kid to try new foods? You just present it. You just put it out there. The biggest appetite is at the very beginning of the meal. Those first bites taste the best. If you want the best secret sauce, it’s not a sauce; it’s just making sure they come to the table hungry. In my book, I start out by saying a good dinner starts with proper snacking routines. We just make sure that we create some space between the last bite of a snack and the first bite of a meal so that the child gets an appropriate build of hunger and appetite.

They can come to the table. If you’ve got something new you want your kids to try, put it out first. Potentially put it with a preferred food or not. Depends on the kid. It’s very strategic. You could put out a new food just by itself, okay? Let’s say you would love your child to love celery and be able to do Ants on a Log. They just haven’t tried it yet. You don’t even know if they like it or not. Great. Put out Ants on a Log all by itself. Maybe they’ll try it; maybe they won’t. A couple of days later, don’t do it every day. A couple of days later, do it again.

Another strategy is to put new foods next to preferred foods, meaning maybe your kid already loves baby carrots, and then you just mix them up: carrot, celery, carrot, celery, carrot, celery. They might not eat the celery. If their hand brushes that celery and when they’re leaning in to dip their carrot in some ranch and they get an aroma of the celery, that’s actually a bit of an inoculation. They’re getting exposed to that food, and that will make the next exposure less scary.

[00:18:41] Gretchen: I’m particularly fascinated about the “What do you do with the ADHD child who gets stuck on eating the same thing over and over again?” Not to cast aspersions, but my 21-year-old son, he still lives at home, and he takes lunch every day, and he goes through lengthy periods of time where he’ll eat the same sandwich every single day. I’ll get in the routine of, “Okay, I need to buy this lunch meat, need to buy this cheese,” and then he announces, after I’ve bought the lunch meat and the cheese, “I don’t want to eat that anymore.” “Oh, great.” I felt like this lady was standing in my kitchen when she asked the question. It’s not that he’s refusing it; it’s just he’s changed gears in his head, but I could relate to this mom’s question: what do you do when they’re always eating or requesting the same thing?

[00:19:34] Katie: Sure. It’s interesting. There’s two elements here. There’s a child who’s neurodivergent, ADHD, right? There’s a child who keeps eating the same thing over and over. Those can be related, but they don’t have to be. Eating the same thing over and over is officially called a food jag, J-A-G, a jag, in the lingo. For some kids, that’s fine. They’re going to do what your son is doing. They’re going to eat the ham sandwich for three weeks. They’ll be like, “Dude, I’m so tired of this ham sandwich.” Then they don’t eat it, and they switch to tuna or whatever, but then they come back to the ham sandwich, right? I’m assuming your son doesn’t drop the ham forever.

[00:20:13] Gretchen: No, but I do think it’s funny. In fact, this morning, he leaves the house at 6:15, so I get up with him just to have a cup of coffee and visit. I said to him, “When are you going to get tired of this one?” because it’s turkey and provolone right now, and he goes, “Oh, we’re probably in for another week.”[laughs] I just giggled, and I told him we were having this conversation today. I said, “I’m going to talk about you.” He goes, “I know you think I’m weird, Mom.” He said, “But in my head, it means I don’t have to think. I know exactly what to expect, and there’s no surprise when lunch rolls around.” I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting. I wouldn’t have thought of it that way at all.”

[00:20:52] Katie: Yes. Kendra Adachi is The Lazy Genius, and that’s what she says. She will say, “Just make a decision once and then repeat it for as long as you can because it does decrease your brain power.” He’s lazy, geniusing his lunch, and then he gets bored with it, and he switches it up. Is there anything you can do about that? No, just make him shop for himself. There’s not.

[00:21:12] Gretchen: I just check with him before I go to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon.

[00:21:16] Katie: Exactly. For him, actually, it’s a really helpful strategy. It’s intentional. There’s no red flags there. Now we’ll come back to the listener who asked the question about the ADHD child. Because when I hear neurodivergence, okay, we know that especially with kids who are on the autism spectrum, they’re, oh my goodness, I think 45% more likely to experience picky texture sensitivities. They’re well over 50% more likely to be picky eaters, to be really selective.

Being on that neurodivergence spectrum can add a layer of problems, being that they might be a more severe picky eater. What we want to look out for with the food jags, like the child food jags, whatever the food is, maybe it’s yogurt, right? A lot of kids will have a Go-GURT every single day, and then they refuse it; that’s called annoying to the parent. If they refuse it and they never bring it back into their diet, like a full month passes and they’re still like, “Oh no, we don’t do Go-GURT anymore,” and they never bring it back, that is actually a red flag of being a problem feeder or a more extreme picky eater, which, with the neurodivergence, could be more common, because problem feeders are these kids who are eating fewer than 20 foods.

Another hallmark, there are many hallmarks, has to be going for over two years. It has to significantly impact family social life, like you just can’t go out because you have to bring your own food anywhere you go. There are some other red flags, but one of them is that when a problem feeder food jags, he or she drops that food and it never comes back. Two answers. Is there anything you can do? Yes, cover that in a minute. If you’re seeing any of those red flags I just saw, it means your child needs feeding therapy. Because kids who are problem feeders, only 6% or 8% of them will get better without professional intervention. That’s not a good statistic, right?

[00:23:21] Gretchen: No, not at all. I have a daughter-in-law who’s actually an occupational therapist-

[00:23:26] Katie: Oh, yes.

[00:23:26] Gretchen: -and one of the things she does is food therapy. I didn’t realize how high that statistic was that you wouldn’t get better without intervention. Wow.

[00:23:35] Katie: There aren’t a lot of kids who are problem feeders, but if you’re thinking, “Holy cow, Katie, you just described my kid,” it’s good news. It’s better to know that you need feeding therapy because now you can get started, and the solution will come faster. Okay. I always have to say that when we talk about problem feeders. Now, for the food jag, like I said, it’s either annoying or it’s a red flag. Either way, the best way to avoid that is to just incorporate more variety.

If you’ve got a kid, what we talk about a lot when we’re working to feed the same meal to the whole family, because I challenge parents of picky eaters to join Team One Meal. Yes, we’re going to be on Team One Meal, and we need to serve the same thing, and for some people, that’s terrifying. They’re like, “My kids now, they’re not going to eat if I try to serve Team One Meal.” Team One Meal doesn’t have to mean you suddenly start making sloppy casseroles that are all mixed together and freak out all your children, and they all go to bed hungry, right? It means that you serve a variety. At minimum, there’s got to be three choices for all your eaters at every dinner.

Especially if you have a picky eater that you’re trying to transition to being a formerly known as picky eater or a growth eater or preference eater, then you’re going to want to include a safe food or a preferred food in there, but you serve it to everyone. Let’s take the mac and cheese. Some kids are getting the mac and cheese every night because Mom’s making the food for the other three or four people in the family, and here comes the mac and cheese for the picky eater.

If the mac and cheese is the safe food, it gets served to everyone, and I even encourage parents to take a bite and put it on your plate. Don’t care whether you eat it or not, but you are demonstrating visually and with your actions that there is family unity at this table and that we all eat together and that everything that’s served is offered to everyone. When it comes to food jags, don’t serve mac and cheese every night; it’s got to be mac and cheese one night, PB&J the next night, sliced into skinny little strips, and you take one, too, Mom and Dad. It’s the yogurt the next night, so you know your kid has more than one safe food or more than one preferred food. It is really important to switch them up, especially the more severe you’re feeling their preferences are.

[00:26:04] Gretchen: This wasn’t a question asked, but I’m thinking about this because I have a friend whose child was this way. Food could not touch on the plate. I remember she actually went out and bought melamine plates that were all divided so that the food wouldn’t touch. How do you get a child over that?

[00:26:27] Katie: I love that she worked with the child’s preferences instead of fighting against them right away because that’s safe and healthy to say, “Okay, for whatever reason right now, your body is saying you don’t want your foods to touch.”

[00:26:40] Gretchen: We actually had a blast because we lived in a metropolitan area and it took us a whole day of shopping to finally find a place where we could actually buy these plates.

[00:26:52] Katie: Oh my goodness.

[00:26:53] Gretchen: We were in some department store in Annapolis, Maryland. My thought was I wouldn’t be doing that, but I supported her because she wanted to do that, so I’m like, “Okay, let’s do it.”

[00:27:10] Katie: Here’s where we want to start talking about root cause. My TEDx talk is called Picky Eating Is Not About the Food because a lot of times something in the child’s body, whether it’s constipation or an undiagnosed food allergy or a sensory sensitivity, the body could be saying no to food, and it’s really not about the food; it’s about what’s going on in the child’s body. Sometimes when kids don’t want food to touch, it’s a texture thing. Mixed textures can overwhelm the senses in the mouth: the sense of taste and texture. Sometimes it’s a visual sensitivity thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a kid or an adult really walk into a really crowded room or maybe a bizarre craft fair. Sometimes that’s just so overstimulating to some people’s eyeballs, and a plate of mixed food can feel the same way.

[00:28:05] Gretchen: Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, I know that I’m intimately familiar with that. I walked into a Buc-ee’s once and went, “No.” It was beeline for the bathroom and then beeline for the door again because it was literally sensory overload.

[00:28:22] Katie: Right, and you couldn’t make a decision; you couldn’t figure out which beef jerky you wanted at Buc-ee’s. You were in flight, fight or flight basically. Imagine a child whose visual sense is overstimulated by the plate that has just been set in front of him or her. Woo. It’s got a whole bunch of stuff on it, and it’s touching. What happens when you’re overstimulated? You get stressed, right? You get clenched. Stress causes adrenaline to go up, which suppresses the appetite. Bummer. That’s not what we want. That’s not what we want at the table, is it?

[00:28:58] Gretchen: No, not at all. I didn’t realize that adrenaline was an appetite suppressant. Interesting.

[00:29:03] Katie: It is. Yes, because think about– they always talk about if you’re running from the bear or whatever, the last thing you need right then is, “I shall now sit down and have a spaghetti dinner.”

[laughter]

[00:29:14] Gretchen: Gee, I’d really like a cheeseburger while he’s running down the road behind me. Sure.

[00:29:18] Katie: You’re a little busy. Your body shuts down slightly unimportant things like digestion and appetite. Stress is no good, which is why I’m clapping for the friend who said, “Okay, we’ll just get the plates that sort it out.” Most likely, most likely that’s not going to last forever for the child, but let’s say it does. Let’s play it out, just like the one-bite rule. What if the child never lets their food touch and they’re 50 years old? Can they still eat a really balanced diet? Yes. Can they still cook for themselves? Can they still enjoy food? Can they still go out to eat in most places? Maybe not Chipotle, but in most places, right?

[00:29:57] Gretchen: True.

[00:29:57] Katie: You can manage that. That’s why we got to tell parents, “Don’t stress. Don’t worry about it. That’s not a red flag that’s going to hurt their relationship with food for the rest of their lives.” Most kids will grow in and out of that phase. I think the best way to get them out of it is to get them in the kitchen and to get them cooking, because, again, there’s that inoculation and that exposure of smelling the foods and hearing it sizzle and touching it and cutting it up.

When you’re choosing your own recipe, maybe the child would choose a recipe accidentally or purposely where the food is mixed up. They might follow that through and be like, “Oh, I’ve seen all the component parts. I’ve seen them come together. It’s not this completely overwhelming entrance into my visual field.” Now, if it’s a texture issue, like some kids, if they were to bite into a sandwich with a really crunchy piece of lettuce and a mushy tomato slice and some dense grilled chicken and then the soft bread, that’s like, “Oh,” they can’t do it.

Again, if you’re on the autism spectrum, you’re much more likely to have texture issues, including mixed texture issues. We might look at a kid and say, “Oh, they don’t like their food to touch. Oh, they don’t like mixed food.” If we really dig in, we might go, “Oh, they actually don’t like mixed food with different textures, but if it’s all the same texture, like a bowl of chili, they’re okay with it,” or it could be the opposite.

Sometimes kids really love the crunch and the soft together, and that’s their jam, but a bowl of mushy chili where it’s slightly different, but all sort of the same? No. We got to dig a little deeper and be pattern seekers. We talked about a puzzle at the beginning. Every kid has his or her own puzzle, and part of it is: what’s their body saying? What are their senses saying? What are their taste preferences? What are the relationships with the child and the parent that could be getting in the way? Like I said, if you’re power struggling about everything from schoolwork to bedtime to friends to food, that’s not about the food.

[00:32:12] Gretchen: Is that the hill you want to die on, right?

[00:32:13] Katie: Right, and it’s not about the food in that case. That’s the child that’s choosing to power struggle about everything. Wow, I really wandered from the initial question. We talked about a lot.

[00:32:23] Gretchen: No. Actually, we didn’t go. I think it’s really important because what you’re saying is you have to choose: is this the hill you’re willing to die on? Maybe it is, and maybe it’s not. I’m trying to find the question; I can remember the question; I thought it was fascinating. A parent having limited food choices.

[00:32:47] Katie: Oh, sure.

[00:32:48] Gretchen: What? She said, “Your best advice for a picky-eater parent to model good habits,” which I thought was really fascinating because that’s a paradigm I don’t know, but I know it exists.

[00:33:09] Katie: Yes, it’s decently common, and it can cause real marital conflict if one parent has really strong limited preferences and the other is like, “Man, I really want my kids to have a good relationship with food. I want them to eat a wide variety, but they’re looking at my spouse and modeling and following what he or she’s doing.” A couple tips for that. First, hopefully the person who asked this question, whether they’re the picky-eater parent or their spouse is, if the picky-eater parent, and I hate to call them that, but we’ll call them the preference, if the parent with strong preferences can at least be on board with, “I want my kids to have that healthy relationship with food and a wide palate,” that’s 80% of the work right there, to be honest.

Because if you have a parent who’s brazenly walking into the kitchen and making him or herself the PB&J and bringing it back to the table when the other parent has made a meal, pssh, you’re toast. Toast the PB&J, toast the kid’s relationship with food, you’re done. It’s just not going to happen. Work to get that parent on board, and then again, 80% of the work is done. What you want to do is model an openness to trying new foods. You don’t have to like them, but you are an adult.

At minimum, let’s say an adult has really strong preferences, and we’re presented with something that we really don’t like. At minimum, you can say, “Ooh, I’m nervous about this. I’m really feeling a lot of fear about this food, but I’m going to smell it. That’s what I’ll do. I’m going to smell it here and see what happens.” Then you smell it, and you might go, “Ooh, this is just not my thing. I don’t think I can taste it today.”

Maybe you man up, and you go, “Okay, I’m a little nervous about the smell, but I’m just going to dip my finger, and I’m just going to get a little taste and see how it goes.” You know what I mean? Just modeling these little tiny steps. Again, you don’t have to like it. You don’t have to reform your own picky eating; you just have to model an appropriate approach to food with curiosity through the fear. It’s okay to admit, “I’m a little afraid of this. This is scaring me.”

[00:35:27] Gretchen: I’m sitting here thinking it’s funny that you said that because so much of what we taste is caught up in how it smells. Years and years ago, I have a very dear coworker friend who, the very first time I went to dinner with her, her plate arrived, and she leaned over and smelled the food. I was like, “Is something wrong?” She said, “No.” She said, “The best part of food is how it smells.” Ever since then, every time we’re together, if she didn’t do that, I would be so disappointed in her because it’s so cute and it’s so precious to watch her savor the food as how it smells. Sometimes, as parents, I don’t think we think about that.

[00:36:18] Katie: No. Good modeling of just being open. I’ll use my husband as an example. He is not a picky eater, but he did come into adulthood and our marriage with a number of foods he just would not eat. He’s added many of them, by the way, in his 30s to his diet, which I love to tell because parents feel so hopeless sometimes. Like, “Oh, my kid will never eat a vegetable.” It’s like, you know what? If you can add foods to your palate and enjoy them in your 30s, your kid is not hopeless.

We’re all learning to eat. Our taste buds are all growing. That’s great. He still does not like cucumbers. Once or twice a year, he’ll make a big show. The rest of the family, not only do we love cucumbers, we also think they’re pretty bland, so we pick on him like, “How could you not like cucumbers? They taste like nothing.” Once or twice a year, he’ll make a big show, and he’ll be like, “I shall now try my annual cucumber.” He’ll put it in his mouth, and he’ll go, “Ooh, it’s still terrible.” It’s funny, right? There’s no stress at the table in that moment because we’re all cracking up and we’re picking on him.

Does everyone have to do that exact thing? No, but it’s one example. I can also picture my husband about 10 years ago picking green spinach out of soup that I had served. Again, he didn’t make a show of that. He would very surreptitiously put it on the close side of his bowl, hidden by his bowl to the children on his plate, and that’s okay. That was him being on Team One Meal, and that was him being on Team Let’s Try Everything and literally hiding, physically hiding, the fact that he couldn’t deal with the slimy spinach, and now he does. He totally eats it. Those are just a couple examples that are hopefully inspiring to say, “Here’s how you can do it. You’re not stuck in a trap.”

[00:38:16] Gretchen: Talk to me a little bit more about Team One Meal because I understand what you mean because I’ve been on the Raising Healthy Families website and toodled around. Can you, for our viewers, explain that philosophy because I think it’s brilliant. If you have multiple picky eaters in a family, this is not an easy thing to do.

[00:38:40] Katie: No, it can be scary. It can be scary. There’s so much good research behind the power of family dinners, but none of it says that everyone eating in the same house in their own bedrooms is helpful; none of it says everyone eating different food on the couch in front of the television is helpful, or on their own individual screens. Like the family dinner, the food doesn’t have to be defined, but the family does need to come together. The amazing benefits of family dinners, they start at two meals a week and they include stronger academics, more protection against risky behaviors like drinking and premarital sex, less depression, less suicidal ideation. If you want your kid, your teen especially, to be healthy, have a minimum of two family dinners; shoot for five to seven every week because–

[00:39:34] Gretchen: That’s amazing. Those are some intrinsics I didn’t anticipate.

[00:39:37] Katie: It’s so powerful. Kids who eat family dinners tend to eat a wider variety and eat healthier as well, but all those other benefits are outside of food even. Amazing. Family dinners are amazing. I really think that if we’re all eating different foods, it is that feeling of, you know how when you get together with people, and you watch the same movie? It’s social, right?

[00:39:59] Gretchen: Sure.

[00:40:00] Katie: If you got together with people and every person in the room was watching their own individual screen, totally different experience, right?

[00:40:06] Gretchen: Sounds like my family with their phones.

[laughter]

[00:40:08] Katie: Okay, but it’s not a community experience. There’s no unity there. I really feel that the same applies to food: that if we’re all eating our own separate meal, there’s a pulling back. If we’re all eating the same food, and again, each plate doesn’t have to look the same, but everyone has gone through the same food line or passed the same food around the table, there’s an immediate visual sense. You’re saying with your actions that we are a family, we come together, and we’re unified at the table, and it just strengthens everything about your family culture.

Now, I said the plates don’t have to look the same because not every person will take the same foods. A deconstructed meal is great for those kids who don’t like their food touching; it’s great for kids who have different preferences. We’re going to serve something like a baked potato bar where everyone gets a baked potato, and they can put various toppings on it, or you take your Mexican or your Asian dish, and you pull everything apart, right? Asian stir-fry: you’re going to have the vegetables, the meat separate, the rice separate, the sauce separate.

[00:41:16] Gretchen: Oh, that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of doing it that way. That way, you can melamine-plate the food, if you will.

[00:41:25] Katie: Yes, most absolutely, and you can make choices. I can remember someone in my community was saying, “Okay, we tried it. We did Team One Meal. I served a deconstructed Mexican meal. One kid had a tortilla with a pile of shredded cheese, and the other kid had a few tortilla chips and some meat, and the other kid had the beans wrapped up in the tortilla with the salsa. The plates didn’t look the same at all, but they’d all been served the same meal.”

There’s really something powerful there. It also comes back to that variety and that exposure. Plus, giving kids choices and agency is also very powerful because, again, it’s stressful to have someone telling you what to do all day.

[00:42:11] Gretchen: Sure.

[00:42:12] Katie: Telling you what to eat and what to choose, and that’s a child’s life. Anytime we can give them choices, that makes them feel a sense of control, which they appreciate; they want to take control of their food anyway. Choices, again, reduce that stress and just slide kids into a lovely family dinner conversation.

[00:42:33] Gretchen: I love that. I think that that’s such a great idea; I wouldn’t have thought to– We had a dinner on Sunday night that was a crockpot Chinese ramen dish that was actually made with a chuck roast. It started with a chuck roast, and you added all the ingredients. Then, at the very end, you threw the ramen noodles in, then shredded the chuck roast and served it. It was delicious.

I was funny in the fact that I constructed this. I chose the recipe. I made the food. Everybody in the family liked it; I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to say, “Oh, I don’t like this.” I just had my plate, and I ate with everybody else and didn’t say anything. The funny part is two of my kids are like, “Can we have that again? That was really good.” I’m like, “Okay, I got to figure out how to tweak that recipe so I like it.” [laughs]

[00:43:29] Katie: For sure. Not all recipes deconstruct easily.

[00:43:34] Gretchen: Sure.

[00:43:34] Katie: You just described one where it’s all together.

[00:43:37] Gretchen: It was what it was. Yes, absolutely. Katie, in these last 15 minutes or so, what would you say would be the setup to create kids who are more food-adventuresome? How can we create a kitchen that invites kids in to try different things?

[00:44:04] Katie: It’s really, first of all, buy the book, The Picky Eater Playbook, because there’s five steps that you should move through in order. We want the kids to have that appetite; we want to be intentional about their first bites with the appetite; we want to have a poker face, which we haven’t even talked about, and just that idea of silence and reducing the stress and reducing the power struggles, choosing the right language. I’ve given you a lot of examples of the language, but I haven’t used the word “poker face” yet.

It’s a whole system, but what I most want parents to remember- the 30,000-foot view of this- is: number one, remember that you’ve got a long time to get this right. This isn’t a one-meal thing that you need to set up perfectly; this isn’t a one-week problem. You have 18 years, likely, that your child will be in your home. Just as you’re building a family culture in many ways, how do we ask questions? How do we learn? How are we safe on our bikes and crossing the street? How do we prioritize sleep? Whatever your family culture is, food is part of that, and you’ve got 18 years to build it. Chill, first of all. Don’t worry about getting it perfect tomorrow. It really is the family culture; the solution is in the phrase, in that it’s the environment.

Inviting kids in, for sure, is about having them be involved in the kitchen as well. Work in the kitchen is so, so powerful. Any picky eating or anti-picky eating strategies that you’re going to try at snack time or at the table or wherever will be supercharged and will go better if the child has had exposure in the kitchen and feels a little ownership of food and feels welcome in the kitchen. That starts, honestly, the moment they’re born.

People will say, “Well, how early is too early to get them in the kitchen? Like eight?” No, eight months. Wear your baby. Let them smell the smells of the kitchen. Let them hear the sizzle. Let them lick the carrot that you’re about to cut or whatever. Let them play in the water. Give them the apples to “wash” when they’re 18 months or 2, because all of that mess is an investment in the child’s brain, saying, “The kitchen is a place where I belong,” instead of many parents’ knee-jerk reaction is, “Oh, honey, go play. I got this. Mama’s going to make dinner. Go play, and please get out of my way.” There’s a lot; knee-jerk sometimes is a little more. We’ll do that until they’re eight or 10. Then we think, “Ooh. Ooh, they’re mid-elementary. Now I can have some helpers in the kitchen.” Guess what? For 8 or 10 years, you’ve been saying, “Please leave.”

[00:46:57] Gretchen: Right. You haven’t set it up correctly. Yes. It’s funny. I’m remembering back when I was 13, we moved several states away. Here we were in a new state, and we were all feeling our way. One night I was cleaning up from dinner, and my mother said, “I just hate cooking dinner,” and I said, “Well, I hate cleaning up.” She said, “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll buy you a cookbook.” She bought me Betty Crocker’s, the plaid Betty Crocker cookbook, that big doorstop. She said, “If you’ll cook dinner, I’ll do the grocery shopping, and I’ll clean up,” and that was all it took. I was off to the races-

[00:47:43] Katie: Amazing.

[00:47:43] Gretchen: -at the age of 13, learning to cook, learning my father’s preferences and the things he liked and didn’t like. He was a little bit more of a– “preferential eater,” I think is the term you used. I also remember we don’t have these things anymore, but I remember in Home Economics being taught that we had to have a colorful plate, that you couldn’t have mashed potatoes and cream of chicken; you needed other colors on the plate. You needed carrots, and you needed green beans and those kinds of things.

In fact, last night at dinner, I was looking at dinner, and we were having leftovers of that ramen dinner, and I had made zucchini, and I was like, “Okay, I got to have another color here.” We ended up peeling a bunch of baby bells and having oranges with that because that was a different color. I don’t think those are things that we’re learning in school now, so how do we translate that to the table at home?

[00:48:55] Katie: You’re right. Yes, most schools do not have Home Economics. I think it’s called Family Sciences now, if it does exist.

[00:49:02] Gretchen: If it exists? Jesus.

[00:49:03] Katie: It’s got a different name. Yes, it’s pretty rare, unfortunately, and this comes back to that, talking about the food. If we can cut some beautiful, vibrant vegetables or some fruits and say, “Oh, what beautiful colors,” you can teach kids why; there’s really good science behind why you should have multiple colors; it’s not just for the eyes because each color is going to have different phytonutrients and different vitamins and minerals for your body.

You don’t use the word “phytonutrients” with a four-year-old. You would say things like, “All different colors have different superpowers,” and you can leave it at that if you want, or you can do a little Dr. Google research and tell them a little about what orange does or what purple does or whatever. I can remember my daughter; she’s more visual than I am; she likes the aesthetics. Now that she’s 18, her hair and her clothing are very different than me, throwing on a few things that maybe look okay, and I don’t check the mirror.

She’s always been that way, and so she would make food beautiful for us. She would cut red, orange, and yellow peppers and alternate them and call it a fire salad. Or at Christmas, she’d find the reddest red apple and the greenest green apple and slice them and, again, alternate them so that it was red and green and just make food beautiful to the eye. I think sometimes we forget that our kids have these preferences, not just food preferences, but lots of personality traits that are different than ours. If you’ve got a kid who likes to make the world beautiful, oh my goodness, give them the job of plating things up.

[00:50:43] Gretchen: Sure. That’s a great idea.

[00:50:46] Katie: That allows them to be very influential in the kitchen without needing, “Oh, Katie, I don’t want to give my five-year-old a knife.” Well, first of all, your five-year-old can totally handle a knife, but they can also do lots of things like that, plating or making the Ants on a Log. Even a three-year-old can spread the nut butter and place and have so much fun; oh, they have so much fun, like placing the little raisin ants. All of that is giving them a sense of belonging in the kitchen; it’s giving them exposure.

You can do so much teaching when you’re together in the kitchen for an extended period of time like that with just tiny sprinkles. “Oh, we’re eating these raw vegetables because they’re going to fuel our bodies, right? Or “We eat lots of colors. We like to see a rainbow because we know that that will help fuel our bodies or help our bodies be healthy,” however you want to say it. Super helpful.

[00:51:39] Gretchen: Come back around to poker face.

[00:51:42] Katie: The poker face is the anti-power struggle strategy because, again, remember, Gretchen, our goal is to create an environment in which our kids can build their own relationship with food without our parent-child relationship getting in the way. Well, guess what? When you say, “Why aren’t you eating that? Please take one bite. Ah, you’re such a picky eater. You have to eat what I’ve made.” All of those are like darts. They’re really interfering with the child’s relationship with food. Often we want to say nothing.

You just serve, or you might say, “Here’s dinner,” literally, or “Here’s an appetizer,” with the strategy of serving what you want them to eat first. “Oh, I made a little appetizer.” “Well, what’s dinner?” “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s coming. Dinner’s not really ready. Here’s an appetizer,” and then you just zip it, and you walk away. In the book, actually, I give a lot of– I call them parent toolbox terms that you can use when maybe you’re tempted to say something a bit sharp.

At the end of the day, we’re very exhausted. Decision fatigue has set in, so I really believe in having phrases that we pull out of our parent toolbox and say in a calm, neutral tone, but you’ve memorized them; you don’t have to think. It’s like your son and the sandwiches. You lazy-geniused it. Right now, if people buy the book in pre-order, they’ll get a cheat sheet printable of the toolbox terms like, “Instead of this, say this,” and you can tuck it in a drawer or put it under something near your kitchen. You’re like, “I don’t remember what to say.” Pull that out so that our words are always positive, always encouraging, always appropriate, and really getting out of the way more than anything with that calm, neutral poker face so that the kids can figure it out with their relationship with the food.

[00:53:41] Gretchen: Well, I love the fact that you’re inviting kids into the kitchen. I’m thinking about being at my son’s house. He has two daughters. One is 10, and one is 3, and they are both responsible for making their lunch for the following day. Every evening, they get out their bento boxes, and they have to make their lunch. His only direction is, “Have you touched the food groups?” This is what he says to them. I can still see the three-year-old standing there on a chair going, “Yes, well, I touched the vegetables, and I touched protein. Do I have to have a fruit?”

My son said nothing. His sister across the table said, “Yes, you have to have a fruit. Go get one.” The three-year-old climbs down off the chair and goes and opens the refrigerator, and says, “Well, all you have in here is grapes. I don’t like grapes. Can I go get a fruit cup from the pantry?” I’m watching this whole byplay, and my son is saying nothing; he’s just standing at the counter, organizing mail while a 3-year-old and a 10-year-old are packing their lunches. I thought, “You know what? He and my daughter-in-law, God bless them, have done something really amazing because that whole byplay had nothing to do with him.” The three-year-old got herself a fruit cup so she could have some fruit on her plate along with her cucumbers and her carrots. [laughs]

[00:55:12] Katie: That’s so great. That’s good training for the three-year-old to even know the food groups. There was a lot of parental input into that, prior to what you witnessed. So good.

[00:55:22] Gretchen: Right. It helps that their mother is an occupational therapist, so I’m sure there have been endless conversations. Just watching that repartee with kids who obviously eat a variety of things, I actually was shocked when I visited them in April because we’ll decide as a family, “What are we going to have on Saturday night?” and my granddaughter, the 10-year-old, said, “Can we just order sushi?” and I was like, “You like sushi?” She said, “Well, I actually prefer sashimi, but I like sushi.” I thought, “I didn’t even know what sashimi was at your age.” I think that’s pretty amazing. Katie, in these final closing moments, what advice would you have for families? How do we make this so that it’s not an argument at every meal?

[00:56:19] Katie: That’s the goal, really. I want to go back to the very first question you asked, which is, “How do I get my child to eat something?” Because that’s never the goal; the goal is to reduce stress at the table. How do you make it not an argument? You don’t engage. It takes two to tango; it takes two to power struggle. Again, I feel like I’m being a bit repetitive, but we want to make sure we serve a variety.

We want to make sure we serve it with that poker face, with that neutral tone. Food isn’t good or bad. Food’s not a moral judgment on your character. Oh, and in fact, my favorite phrase, the best parenting toolbox phrase, which is good to close with, is, “You don’t have to eat that,” right? It’s the exact opposite of one bite. Talk about reducing the stress from both the parent and the child. Parents, you don’t have to get them to eat that. Not your job, right?

Kids, the parent, you would literally say, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to eat that. Yes, I’d like you to put a bite on your plate. Sure, I’d like you to smell it. Why don’t you serve me if you’re nervous about that food?” There are so many little strategies you can use to get kids exposure, but telling them, “You don’t have to eat that,” is going to take that stress level so far down, and it leaves room for everything good to happen.

[00:57:36] Gretchen: Well, I am just blown away by your, “Well, your taste buds aren’t mature to say that,” because that is the best reverse psychology I’ve ever thought of. Goodness gracious. What do you mean they’re not mature? Watch this. [laughs] That’s pretty amazing. Katie, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve been so excited about this. Tell us again the title of your book.

[00:58:03] Katie: Yes, the book is The Picky Eater Playbook. Currently, before November 10th, 2026, it’s in preorder. You can go to thepickyeaterplaybook.com and get a whole bunch of bonuses, from those cards I mentioned to some videos that help your kids get in the kitchen, to some extended videos for the parents to do some more learning. Yes, we’re really trying to help families keep it simple, reduce their stress, and help their kids build a lifelong healthy relationship with food.

[00:58:35] Gretchen: Absolutely. Katie, I want to thank you so much. This was a wonder. Now I’m hungry. We’ve had this conversation, and now I’m sitting here going, “Ooh, lunch.” [laughs] It was amazing. Katie, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Congratulations on the book. We’ll make sure that gets included in the show notes so that parents can reference it. I want to thank you all for joining us this afternoon, for allowing us to come into your living room and to have this really important conversation because we need to raise the next generation to enjoy the joy of food. Katie, thanks so much.

[00:59:09] Katie: Oh, I love that.

[00:59:11] Gretchen: I appreciate it.

[00:59:11] Katie: Thank you, Gretchen.

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