29. Learning to Like New Foods
Do you try offering new foods to your child, only to become frustrated each time because they only end up refusing it? Many parents who have come to me have been working on picky eating and expanding their diet without any kind of success, and it turns out that they were just not using the right approaches for their child on the spectrum. The appropriate method can help your child grow confident with food, and grow trust with food and with you!
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IN THIS EPISODE
What is the rule of 10 for introducing new foods
Discovering which mealtime is best to introduce new foods
Best language to use surrounding trying new foods with your child
LINKS
Join the Autism Nutrition Library
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast where you take a deep dive into the research on autism and dietary changes, nutrition supplements, and lifestyle modifications. Every week, we break down nutrition topics and an easy-to-understand way for you to feel less overwhelmed and feel confident on your nutrition journey with autism.
Hi, everybody! Welcome to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. I'm your host Brittyn Coleman, the autism dietician. And today we're going to talk more about picky eating for autism. This is one of my favorite topics and I support so many families through expanding their child's diet successfully, and the right way for their child with autism. Maybe parents who have come to me have been working on picky eating and expanding the diet without any kind of success, and it turns out that they were using approaches that were not accurate for kids on the autism spectrum. So we want to make sure to use the appropriate method to expand foods for children on the autism spectrum, to help them grow confidence with food, and grow trust with food and with you, the caregiver.
Today, we're going to talk about introducing new foods, or as I like to say, learning to like new foods. There is a reason that I view it this way. We expect kids to like new foods just automatically. And as adults, we can pick up a new food, pop it in our mouth and decide if we like it. Usually we will. Now here's the thing.
Just like learning your ABCs, your shapes, your colors you have to learn to like new foods too. And unfortunately, a lot of times we're just expecting kids to enjoy and like a food the very first time they ever see it, they ever try it, and put it in their mouth and that's just inaccurate. It does take time to learn to like new foods.
In fact, I often use the rule of 10. This means that a child must try food at least 10 times before they decide if they don't like it or not. A lot of times, parents will just take the first time that a child tries a food and says yuck. And they will say, "oh, they don't like that food. I'm never going to give it to them again because they don't like it". But in fact we're losing the opportunity of learning to like that food when we stopped giving it to them the very first time
Now we do have to respect children's preferences. Of course, some people just generally do not like a certain food. For example, I hate olives. I do not like beets either. And I wish I did as a dietitian. I know how beneficial both of them are, but my taste buds just do not like those certain foods.
And at the end of the day, your child might not like a certain food either. So it's important that we listen to them. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we give their body and their taste buds, the opportunity in order to learn to like this new food. Now I said the rule of 10 trying a food at least 10 times before deciding if we like it. This is for children without autism or sensory processing disorder. We actually see for kids with autism or SPD, it can take upwards of 30 times of trying a new food before deciding if they like it or not are introducing it into their food repertoire.
This does not mean stuffing a food down your child's throat making them put this food in their mouth. There are many other ways to expose them to a food, to get them comfortable to eating that food before they actually put it in their mouth. Sometimes this is playing with the food. This can be touching, smelling, stacking, interacting with that food to help them feel more comfortable around it.
They do not have to put it in their mouth the first time. In fact, that can actually make them have a negative connotation to that food. If they are not ready or they're already feeling overwhelmed or overstimulated, and we are forcing them to put a new food in their mouth when they're not quite ready to do that. So we can explore with our different senses, touch, smell. We can taste something and spit it out. We can interact with the food in so many different ways to help get them feeling more confident to try that new food.
Now when we are learning to like new foods, we want to focus on one thing at a time. So we only want to put one new food on the plate at each meal time. Now you can choose to do this every single meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I usually don't do it at snack time, but you can make that call between you and a feeding therapist. But if you feel like your child is not ready to introduce a food at every single meal time you can choose one or two meals a day. Now you want to think about which meals do you think are going to be the most successful for your child. In the morning at breakfast we might have more energy, but some people are not morning people and they may feel more groggy and might feel more rushed as well. Because we know at breakfast, a lot of times we were rushing out the door to get into therapy or to get to school. And breakfast might not be the perfect time for you to introduce a new food. What we really want is consistency.
A lot of times lunch can be difficult to introduce new foods if the child is at school, but if they're at home, that's a really great opportunity as well. I love introducing foods at lunchtime when they are at home. If you homeschool, or if they're at home over the lunch hour. Dinner can be a really great time to introduce new foods as well because it's oftentimes less rushed. However, sometimes kids are feeling really tired and their bucket of overstimulation might be full after being at therapy and being at school. So they may not have the capacity at that point. In order to try new foods if they're feeling overstimulated so it's really important for us to just listen to your child's nonverbal and verbal cues in order to decide which is going to be the most successful time to introduce a food.
Now we do want to have consistency in order for a child to learn to like a new food. If we only present it once. They're not going to learn what it looks like, what it tastes like, what it feels like. They're only going to see it that once. And then if they see it a few weeks later, they might've forgotten what that was or not recognize it. If it's prepared in a different way.
So I do suggest introducing it a few meals in a row or days in a row to help them learn about it before transitioning to a new food. Then sticking with that same exact food for every meal every day can cause boredom or cause them to lose interest. And we really want to keep them interested. So you can choose a few different options and what's going to work best for you. You can try the same food, every single meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two to three days.
You could try the same food at a certain meal, just like, for five to seven days. There's really no wrong way but we want to have some kind of consistency to help them recognize that food, and exposure 5 to 10 or more times in one week would be great to help them learn more about that specific food.
If you notice your child is feeling very anxious or overstimulated when we are introducing new foods, you might consider using something like a learning plate or learning bowl, which is a separate small plate or a bowl to introduce a very small amount of that new food. When it's on that plate, we don't have to eat it. We can talk about what color it is, what shape it is, if they can stack it, what does it smell like? Does it have a big or a little smell? Can you lick it like a lizard? You can play around with all of these different options.
When kids taste something or smell something and then they say "yuck", I love giving some new words to that where we can say," right, this is a new food you haven't tried before", "That's a big smell", or "that's a different smell" and it helps give them some kind of neutral word to use around that new food. I've never tried this before. I'm still learning to like this. You can also use the word "yet".
You don't like this food yet. So there are many different ways to help put them in a mindset of we're learning to like this. You're not forced to try it now, but we are going to take steps in order to help your taste buds in your body be open to trying this food in the future/
I have so much more I want to tell you about picky eating. Unfortunately, I can't fit it all into one podcast, but the good news is that I do have an online course coming out all about picky eating for autism. It's called Overcoming Picky Eating with Autism, and this is an online course that is perfect for parents who are looking to expand their child's diet.
And help them comfortably try new foods. If you're interested in getting on the wait list for this course, you can visit the show notes and click on the waitlist link. You can also go on Instagram and find the waitlist through the link in my bio, and as soon as it's ready, we will reach out to you.
And it is coming very, very soon. And I'm so excited to launch it! So you'll be the first to learn about this if you sign up for the waitlist. Thank you so much for joining me this week as we talk more about Nourishing Autism. I look forward to chatting with you next week as we explore deeper and figure out how to help your kids feel their best and thrive!
This podcast is brought to you by the Autism Nutrition Library, a one-stop hub and community for all things autism nutrition created to help you explore evidence-based nutrition approaches that have proved to be effective to help individuals with autism feel their best, do their best, and be their best.
Join now by clicking Autism Nutrition Library or by stopping by my Instagram @AutismDietitian. See you next week.
Transcribed by Descript
ABOUT Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, CLT
I’m a Registered Dietitian, Autism Nutrition Expert, and the Creator of the Autism Nutrition Library.
I work with parents of children with autism to optimize their child’s diet, supplements, and lifestyle based on their unique needs. I help expand accepted foods for picky eaters, improve digestion and gut health, find the root causes of many symptoms, and ultimately help them feel their best so that they can do their best and be their best.
Not only do I relate to families on a professional level, but also on a personal level. I have been a part of the autism community for over 20 years, as my younger brother was diagnosed on the spectrum at a young age.
I look forward to working with you to uncover the root cause of your child’s symptoms and help your child be the best version of themselves!
