[Serious] Do you know of any processed snack foods with some vitamins?
Trying to keep my very picky eater 3yo healthy as we’re (hopefully) expanding his diet. Right now the only foods I can get him to actually eat are McDonald’s, a specific brand of yogurt, banana bread, some crackers and some bars. Refuses any beverage besides water. (He’s likely on the spectrum.)
Refusing anything but water isn’t necessarily bad.
He probably wants things with a predictable mouth feel and neutral temperature that aren’t overpowering.
Hotdogs tend to be popular (the cheap ones).
If you haven’t tried cheese toast, it may be an option, although you need to be careful about the type of cheese.
Also worth trying baby carrots and seedless grapes that don’t have browned ends and are off the stem.
Something else that may be useful is having him help make some snacks; kids will often eat things they’ve made themselves when they won’t accept the same thing from someone else.
If you can afford it, you could also try a sampling party where you buy a small portions of 5 or so similar items at a time, and get him to taste them all and tell you which is the worst and best. Don’t bring “will you eat this” into it at all: it’s a game and he has to rank them. In order to rank them he has to taste them.
Not with real food, but I have saved the mcnuggets box and tried giving him other kinds of chicken nuggets. He nibbled on a couple and then made a look like “well this whole batch is messed up.”
How about some dried fruits or dried vegetables like you can buy in bulk bags at a store like a health food store? My mom and dad got me hooked on dried pineapple and other dried fruits as a kid.
He’s a super picky eater. I serve him a wide variety but the only things he’ll actually eat are the more predictable, processed stuff so I’m trying to make sure he’s at least getting all the vitamins and nutrients he needs.
It’s also worth getting them checked out by a gastroenterologist. Sometimes picky eating is a subconscious thing to avoid having the shits all the time.
I’m not trying to downplay the reality of serious health concerns sometimes being behind food habits, but I think I need to say…
Picky eating is an absolutely normal part of child development. Anecdotally, both of my kids went through two distinct phases of picky eating, at around 3-5 and 8-11.
They gradually grow out of it. All you can do is try to make sure what they are eating is nutritious enough while they are going through it.
Yes, that may be the answer. He’s getting help through early intervention and on the waitlist to get tested for autism so see if that’s what’s causing his picky eating. Luckily his pediatrician is not urgently concerned about his diet because he’s growing well enough and seems healthy, but since I’ve stopped breastfeeding I’ve been keeping track of what foods he’s been eating and noticed how few vitamins are in all the things he’ll eat.
Op, I agree with getting some gastric testing, if possible. I may or not be divergent, testing is cost prohibitive. But I was diagnosed as a child with IBS and still have occasional issues after food poisoning set backs a while ago. After getting that straightened out, a decent probiotic cap with fiber set me back on track until I could eat a mostly veggie diet, until the robber Barron corporate overlords started pricing decent food so crazily. You can add nutrition to crackers or bread with nut butters if your toddler will have them. If toddler requires more sweetness, try adding as little maple syrup as possible, and honey if his practitioner deems it ok.
Have you tried home made sweet potato fries (oven baked or air fry is fine, you'd have to look up how to oven fry them), or if your child will eat baked sweet potatoe with a little real butter they are highly nutritious and gut friendly. It's just hard to say because one of the many reasons I may be asd is it doesn't matter how much I like the flavor of something, if I don't like the feel or consistency of a food, I'm simply not having it.
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