As a baby, Harrison’s first food was unsweetened rhubarb. He happily ate curries. But when he was 3, something changed. Vegetables became enemy No. 1, says his mother, Dara Squires. It seems to be all about texture: He will eat them if they’re puréed into soups or sauces.
Recently, the list of green-light foods that Harrison, now 6, will eat has shrunk further. Sandwich meats are out. Even chicken nuggets – both the commercial kind and Ms. Squires’s healthy homemade version – are off the table. Bread and pasta are still okay. And he will eat hot dogs and pepperoni – but Ms. Squires says they’re not on the family menu.
The boy is anything but obnoxious about his proclivities.
“He’s apologized for being so picky. He’s actually said, ‘It’s okay, mom. I’ll make a jam sandwich,’ when I’ve made dinner,” says the Corner Brook, Nfld., mother of three. “But it would be wonderful if what he could do would be eat the food. I hope it’s not going to be a lifelong issue.”
If his habits continue into adulthood, there may be a new label waiting for him there. “Selective eating disorder” is being considered for inclusion alongside others in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is due in 2013.
Preliminary results from a Duke University survey of 7,500 adult picky eaters adds credibility to the idea that picky eating may be a disorder of its own, with different characteristics than bulimia and anorexia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Parents of picky eaters wonder if there’s something to that theory. “I sometimes feel that way, that he has an eating disorder,” says Ms. Squires. She suspects that early food insensitivities may have turned him off eating. He will say he’s “allergic” to a food he doesn’t want to eat.
Negative associations with food in childhood can play a role, eating researcher Nancy Zucker of Duke told a reporter for news service LifeScience, referring to issues such as severe acid reflux, or behaviour learned at the table.
A recent study of 405 children ages 7 to 9 done by the Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London teased out one such dinner-table behaviour. Children who had more “avoidant” eating behaviours, such as fussy or slow eating, had mothers who used more pressure, study author and doctoral student Laura Webber said in an e-mail interview.
The study adds to research suggesting picky eating can emerge despite parents’ best intentions. “It is widely presumed that parents have a policy and impose it on their child,” said Ms. Webber. “More likely, they have goals and do their best to achieve them, but if there is friction in response to these goals then parents may give up and children get their own way.”
Ms. Squires has sought help. She’s bought books, followed experts and tried various programs – and blogged about it at her site, Readily A Parent. But she finds some advice tiresome – especially the well-worn tip that a child can try something 10, 15 or 20 times before they accept it. “Every nutritionist and dietitian will tell you this,” she says. “He has been getting carrots for four years. Almost every single day. He’s taken maybe five bites.”
Ottawa mother Annie Urban has two children, each with their own eating issues. Her son, 6, will only eat vegetables in purée form. Her daughter, 3, loves raw cut-up vegetables. She refuses meat, however, although she might nibble on bacon in a Caesar salad.
