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What Is Food Chaining?
Food Chaining Ideas & Facts For Helping Picky Toddler's Expand Their Diet
what is food chaining?
Food chaining is gradual and intentional, and is one of the proven ways to expand a picky eater’s diet.
Feeding therapists often use this method, yet is more of an ‘art’ approach, rather than a ‘science’. I’ve found though, that most of handling babies and toddlers is – would you agree?
When doing food chaining, you are working off of what your toddler already likes and regularly eats. From here, you make ONE slight change to their food at a time, inching toward completely different foods.
For example, if your toddler loves strawberries and white cheese squares, you could serve a different type of white cheese in the same shape as the one they love, and see how they react to it.
The name of this food chaining game is: test and try, and take note of what works. Then, do more of that!
Some other examples of slight changes would be: new texture, new shape, new brand, new color.
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So, for example, you wouldn’t serve your toddler grilled chicken strips, carrots and quinoa all at once when food chaining, if they usually eat chicken nuggets, broccoli and white rice.
Instead, you could serve a different brand of chicken nugget – that would be the slight change to start with. Then, you could serve broccolini instead of broccoli, with their chicken nuggets and rice. Then, a blend of 1/3 quinoa 2/3 white rice. These are excellent slight changes.
Here’s another example:
- I was working with a toddler who loves ground beef tacos. They love them with melted Mexican blend cheese. One day, I sprinkled a few pieces of some finely grated carrot into the ground beef. They inspected it and were slow to eat it, but ate it. The next time I served it, I sprinkled a little bit more finely grated carrot. They ate it, no hesitancy. The next time I served it with a skinny line of finely grated carrot next to the beef, under the melted cheese. Once again, they were a little slower to eat it, but ate it all. The next time I served it, I did the line of grated carrot next to the ground beef and a sliced carrot stick as a side. They ate the taco, no problem, and took a couple nibbles of the carrot stick. Finally, I swapped the flour tortilla with a whole wheat tortilla, finely grated carrot and ground beef mixture under the melted cheese and 2 carrot sticks on the side. They ate the taco, no problem and ate half of one carrot stick.
In the example above, the toddler discovered the flavors and textures slowly and was unafraid of the carrot (new food) by the time I gave them a regular carrot stick! Win!
When doing food chaining, which I often do with picky eaters here at my daycare and preschool, I like to have their beloved foods handy. Even if I am not serving those foods, it is helpful to have them on hand, as this process is gradual and collaborative and I want to maintain a sense of trust, safety and openness during the process.
When I say collaborative, I mean: I always tell toddlers about the changes I will be making to their foods. We are on the same page. We are tackling this together.
Telling them about the changes might sound something like: “hey babe, in a couple days we are going to start having new foods on our plates! We’ll go slow and see what we like! Mommy will include foods you love too!” I’d repeat this a few times each day for 2-3 days, then start the food chaining.
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What is food chaining?
For many parents, being so transparent with their toddler about food changes can sound pretty scary. They’d prefer to not say anything and see how their toddler responds. If you choose to do this, I would highly encourage you to think about how you will handle reactions to the shock of something new so you can keep the process moving forward.
Likewise, when giving your toddler a heads up, while this has always worked better for me, it is not magic. Toddlers still have feelings, sometimes big feelings, about hearing that I will be serving new and ‘scary’ foods.
handling push back from toddlers
Here is how I handle such feelings when serving new foods:
- If a toddler says “no! I don’t like it!”, I would say “Ok, this is what we have for lunch today. We don’t know if we like something until we try it. Let’s try it and if you still want your turkey sandwich after trying it, I will grab it for you ok?” – I put these statements out there and set the mealtime boundary, while also giving them the power to choose if they want their ‘safe’ sandwich or not. Whether or not they eat the new food, I say something like this continuously when I serve a new item.
- I always serve at least 2 foods I know that will feel safe sitting with and like eating. This varies toddler to toddler, so when I’m working with picky toddlers, I am usually making separate meals for about a month or two, until they grow to know and like more variety that I typically serve.
- If a toddler cries when I serve a new food, I would say “New foods can be scary huh? *Hug* Let’s pull it into tiny tiny pieces and put them in a line or put them all on one side and stack them up high! These are crunchy like a chip!” – I recognize their feelings, comfort them BUT LEAVE THE FOOD in front of them and encourage them TO GET HANDS ON with the food, even if they don’t eat any of it. Getting them hands on is still a WIN! Handling foods is a form food acceptance and one slight step closer to sniffing, licking, tasting foods!
Remember, this whole process is gradual, which also means we must recognize progress as more than ‘taking bites’.
In addition to handling push back, we want to help our children get into the mindset that mealtime is an enjoyable experience. We want to help them feel confident in trying new foods.
Some ways we can do this are – educating them on all different types of foods (where they come from, how they can be cooked, what they feel like, etc), feeding them when they show us hunger cues vs at a scheduled time, talking about something that sparks their joy or interest at the table vs only talking about the food and eating, and being silly with new foods (putting two carrots sticks in your mouth like a walrus might get some giggles AND they may get hands on with the sticks too! Which is one step closer to tasting!)
You can see more about the process I use to do this, here: How To Get Your Picky Eater To Try New Foods – 9 Tips That Work Wonders
Check out these tools for feeding picky eaters:
the best way to approach food chaining is to:
- Expect feelings and push back
- Know it will take several weeks or more to start to see acceptance and new habits
- Have a plan of what you will say before serving foods and after they respond to seeing those foods
- Expect to validate feelings and comfort your toddler more, when they are upset, yet keep serving new foods
- Serve meals with 2-3 foods they know and love to eat
This ^ mix of things when doing food chaining, will keep things moving forward, slowly but surely.
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What is food chaining?
Overcoming picky eating is not a sprint, unfortunately. Changes don’t happen overnight, but they WILL happen with strategic action and meaningful consistency.
And food chaining is a wonderful way to make those changes a reality for your family.
This quote comes to mind: You’re not going to master the rest of your life in one day. Just relax. Master the day. Then just keep doing that every day. (You’re not going to master picky eating in a day. Just relax. Master the slight change. Then just keep doing slight changes until you have done all of these slight changes that equal more variety in your toddler’s diet.)
You can see all of my ‘Transforming Picky Eating’ blog posts, here, for more support with your picky toddler. Let’s make those changes together!
You can also follow me for helpful tips on Instagram, here.
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