At my low-carb/keto clinic, when nurse Sylvie and I teach patients to open their minds to new culinary possibilities with low carb food, we often have to make them shift their focus from "everything they won't be able to eat anymoreʺ to "all the new possibilities you never knew existed for youʺ.
Most patients, eventually, come around to discovering how delicious low-carb food can taste. Still, it is a struggle for many of them. And they are adults.
Kids, however, can give bring the word ʺstruggleʺ to a whole new level when it comes to food. If you're the parent of a picky eater, you know what I'm talking about. If you're the parent of a picky eater who has known the pre-LCHF era, you KNOW what I'm talking about. And you might even be shaking your head, feeling defeated, right now.
I'm a family doctor, but I also have a family of my own, which includes a spirited 3-year-old girl, a sleep hater 1-year-old boy, and a husband who has recently been stepping dangerously into the high-fat high-carb zone (but that's for another blog entry!).
I was breastfeeding my boy when I started eating low carb. He has been weaned onto low carb, and so it's never been a problem. He thrives on scrambled eggs made with 35% cream and old cheddar, butter on everything, plain 10% yoghurt, etc. Indeed, this baby will eat anything, including sand and rocks, if he gets the chance. Easy.
My daughter, on the other hand, has always been a picky eater. And she's always been very tiny, so we have constantly worried about her food intakes. Despite our very best intentions, our numerous wholesome and healthy attempts, her diet slowly, unnoticedly, morphed into basically sweet yoghurt, plain chicken, pasta, and everything sugary.
It was sub-optimal, to say the least, but dealing with a difficult second pregnancy, then a newborn who never intended to sleep, and having to return to work too early, left me with little energy to constantly fight with her at every meal. If she ate something, we kind of considered it a victory.
Enters low carb...
Do you want to talk about feeling defeated?
Andreas, the doctor behind DietDoctor, once said to me that it was easy to do low carb with kids: just serve them unprocessed healthy natural foods. That's it.
This is great advice.
It works wonderfully with my boy, who prefers creamy omelets over sand and rocks any day. But clearly, he hasn't met my 3-year-old daughter... who prefers air over low-carb food.
So, I recently embarked on a mission to fully turn my daughter into a low carber (at least at home, where I have control). After all, I have been eating low carb for over a year, and my husband has joined me about six months later (and let me tell you he didn't go down without a fight!). We all low carb it, except for my picky daughter.
I also have numerous parents in my low-carb clinic who always ask me how they are supposed to feed their kids with this way of eating.
Now, kids don't necessarily need to be strict low carb. Wholesome unprocessed food is the way to go, and fruit and veggies can be their main sources of carbs. Fruit are not necessary every day. Let's no forget that there are no essential carbs, and that their brains don't need exogenous sources of glucose to function properly.
But in practice, how do you conquer picky eaters and turn them into happy and thriving low carbers?
I decided to ask wiser women who are also doctors, and who, for sure, would know better than to only feed sweet yoghurt, chicken and pasta to their picky kids. Here's a list of their suggestions:
- Buy full-fat plain yoghurt and add unsweetened applesauce to make it taste sweet. Slowly decrease the amount of applesauce until there is none left. And stop buying sweet yoghurt. If you don't have it at home, you won't be able to serve it.
- Serve a mayo dip at every meal, for everything from veggies to meat.
- Melt cheese on top of everything that is disliked.
- Put cream cheese on veggie sticks, like cucumbers, and peanut or almond butter on slices of apple.
- Offer cheese and nuts as a snack.
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Coconut Pancakes 953 Moderate low carb Medium 15 + 15 m15 minutes preparation 15 minutes cooking time Make low-carb crêpes, pancakes or waffles for breakfast, instead of cereal. Instead of maple syrup (we live in Canada where this is the norm), melt butter and add a little bit of maple extract, and pour over the crêpes. Add whipped cream if necessary. - Makes pancakes with one mashed banana and two eggs mixed well and cooked in coconut oil, topped with peanut or almond butter.
- Bake low-carb cookies, with your kids if possible.
- Offer scrambled eggs with extra butter as a bedtime snack if supper was a disaster.
- Eating dark chocolate is sometimes better than no chocolate at all, from the kids' point of view, so keep some in your pantry for cases when chocolate is necessary (and help yourself too if it's been that kind of day).
- Bacon tends to be loved by kids. It's a way to increase their lipid intakes.
- Tacos with shells made out of cheese tend to be on the winning list.
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Fat Head Pizza 1,541 Ketogenic low carb Medium 15 + 30 m15 minutes preparation 30 minutes cooking time Fathead pizza is also usually a winner, including with picky partners. A little pureed broccoli can be hidden in the sauce. - Marinara sauce can hide pureed vegetables quite well.
- Serve paleo bread or any keto bread. It's really the toppings that matter.
- Add loads of melted butter to cooked veggies. And some salt.
- Lay out a tray of veggie sticks with a low-carb dip in front of your kids before supper is ready. They are likely to start eating them.
- Try cheese fondue with lightly cooked veggies to dip in the fondue.
- Offer "ice creamʺ made with Greek yoghurt and a frozen fruit, like a banana or a mango, in the food processor. No need to add sugar.
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Frozen Yogurt Popsicles 491 Liberal low carb Easy 10 m + 2 h10 minutes preparation 2 hours cooking time Make popsicles with full-fat yoghurt and fruit. - Make drinkable yoghurt with kefir and some berries, and a bit of maple syrup or Swerve in decreasing amounts.
- Whipped cream with berries make a wonderful dessert.
- Make a ʺmilkshakeʺ restaurant-style with full fat yoghurt, full fat milk, low-carb protein powder, vanilla extract, cocoa powder and a little bit of sweetness in decreasing amounts. It can easily be topped with whipped cream and a few shaves of 90% dark chocolate. Leave nothing to chance and serve in a nice glass and a straw. Currently, the PawPatrol glass is the one that makes the milkshake taste the best in our home.
- Make chia-seed jam with 1 cup of strawberries, 2 tablespoons of chia seeds, a squirt of lemon juice and a little bit of maple syrup or honey (if your kids are older than one year of age). Let it sit overnight in your fridge. If your kids are picky with textures, you can always put it in the food processor once the seeds have become jellied.
General tips
- Get the junk out of the house! If it's not there, it can't be eaten. This applies to you too, the parent.
- Try really hard not to reward with sweet things (but rewarding yourself with a glass of red wine after a crazy day is okay).
- When they ask for something specific (which is no longer in your house because you've cleared the junk, right?), keep saying "we don't have it, but you can have this or that insteadʺ and provide alternatives.
- When introducing a new food, place one thing in front of them that you know they will eat, one thing they might eat, and one thing that is worth a try. And just keep offering.
- Try taking your kids to a local farmers market, where they put out plates of fresh vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers for people to try before they buy. Your kids might be tempted to try the vegetables.
- Make your older kids watch That sugar film. But don't bribe them with food.
- Get yourself good books, such as Super Food for Superchildren, by Tim Noakes, Jonno Proudfoot and Bridget Surtees, and get inspired.
Don't forget that you won't win every time, but you'll likely succeed in greatly reducing their sugar intakes, compared to other kids their age. In the short term, it's already a victory. With time, though, you'll be teaching them notions that will certainly not be lost when they become adults, no matter how you currently doubt it. At least, that's what I tell myself on a daily basis.
I would love to hear your best tricks, foods and advice to conquer your picky eaters. Leave them in a comment!
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Dr. Èvelyne Bourdua-Roy
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