Last Updated on February 16, 2021 by TheMealPrepNinja
How To Meal Prep for Picky Eaters
Are you finding it hard when coming up with healthier and more fulfilling meals that excite picky palates? You are not alone. The term picky eater is quite unfair and always comes with a negative tag relating to kids. However, grown-ups do suffer from it too. It’s associated with grumpiness during meal times. Wouldn’t you want to be in control of what goes into your mouth? Problems arise when you want to dig into your steak the whole week without healthy alternatives. To avoid such frustrations, meal prep for picky eaters should do the trick. Sometimes, it’s easier said than done. We look at how to address picky eating issues and how to ensure picky eaters get their nutritional requirements.
7 Sure-fire Ways to Meal Prep For Picky Eaters
Buffet Preps
Meal prepping for a single picky eater is a breeze. However, it’s a totally different ball game and not a walk in the park anymore when more than one eater is involved. How do you address such differing dietary needs with differing tastes?
Buffet-style meal prepping comes across as the simplest way to address such challenges. It entails separately prepping meal components. In this way, every individual has a choice of deciding what ends up on their plate. A simple way to pull it off is prepping carbs, proteins, veggies, and dressing or sauces separately. The rest relies on your imagination. You could come up with different customizable salads, wraps, and bowls to push you through the week.
Being Creative With Recipes and Presentations
It’s no longer a kiddy issue anymore. Grown-ups, just like children, Grown-ups can as well be put off by unappealing dishes, appearance, or textures of certain foods. That’s why it’s essential to wow your food when getting one to try out new dishes. Using a mixture of brightly colored items such as veggies goes a long way in making your child take that first bite. Furthermore, they are a healthier alternative. Chopped onions, carrots, and mushrooms can easily be added to child-friendly meals like pizza, pasta sauces, and soup.
You could also use different cookie cutter shapes to ramp-up your kid’s appetite by prepping different fruits. It’s all in the presentation.
Be a Role Model
Father: Be careful where you walk, son.
Son: Tread cautiously; I follow your footsteps
More often than not, we as grown-ups tend to ignore the simple fact that children mimic our ways. They are impacted by our food choices at a tender age by watching our feeding habits. Research shows that children will likely accept new or different foods when other people in their surroundings eat them as well.
A different study of 160 families under observation found that children who observed parents consuming veggies as snacks and salads during meal times met their daily fruit and vegetable recommendations in stark contrast to children who didn’t.
In short, initiating meal prep for picky eaters can be a psychological affair for both children and grown-ups. Tendencies tend to rub off on others with time.
More Tends to Be Overwhelming
Hearty portions are typically served by parents who wish to give their children the required calories they need. However, children who are picky eaters tend to consider this a turn-off. They may keep the forks away since the food portions tend to be too overwhelming. The same also applies to grown-ups.
When introducing new portions, a rule of thumb is to start out small, presenting it before other favored items and scaling it up during other subsequent meals. Based on your child’s reception, it’ll give you an idea of the quantity to prep for their next meal. Scale it up, all the while accompanying it with different healthy options until you reach the appropriate serving size.
Seek Paediatric of Medical Intervention
Picky eating is most common in children. With this in mind, you must rule out allergies and intolerance. Allergies are easy to spot and normally manifest themselves as rashes, swellings, and itchiness. On the other hand, intolerance is hard to spot.
Have a seat down with your child to find out their likes and dislikes while jotting it down.
Gluten-laden foods, cruciferous veggies, and dairy products may cause uneasiness like bloating. Such insights will play a crucial role in helping you come up with items for a meal prep plan that’s user-friendly and cut down on unnecessary hospital visits.
Further, speak to your pediatrician or medical expert on the best alternatives or the next course of action.
Always Remember You Are in Charge
Such scenarios mostly apply when dealing with children. They can be conniving and persuasive. In such situations, parents need to remember that they are in control. Don’t get me wrong. Forcing food down their throats ends up doing more harm than good.
Picky eaters have the tendency for specific meals when the rest are having something different. Well, don’t bow to pressure. Serve one meal, seat them down and help them through by highlighting the different tastes, textures, and flavors on the plate.
Pro tip: Always serve a mix of new foods and those that they like to increase acceptance. This way, you won’t fully cave into their demands.
When it comes to meal prepping, ensure that you consider their input when coming up with a plan. Mixing new foods with what they already love is a prerequisite to success.
NB. It’s essential to note that such a strategy isn’t a one size fits all solution. At some point, you’ll have to change tact by incorporating different strategies such as compromise with kids of different age sets (good luck with adolescents!).
Involve Your Kids or Spouse
Make them a part of the process. Whether it’s planning, heading to the grocery store, or prepping meals, chances are that they’ll be excited and look forward to what lands on their plate. Make the children complete tasks that are safe and age-appropriate. Furthermore, apart from building confidence, they’ll be armed with life-long skills when it comes to meal prepping.
It’s much easier for grown-ups picky eaters since they are old enough to make conscious decisions about their health. They don’t need a sense of direction. Such habits tend to rub off on them with time, particularly when health benefits start to manifest.
Whether you’re feeding a picky eater or are a picky one yourself, feeding can be outright frustrating and stressful. Sometimes, you tend to think that you or your child will never escape such a negatively perceived habit. Let us try to understand the science behind such feeding habits.
Why Are Picky Eaters Picky?
Picky eaters mostly deal with neophobia; fear of foreign or new foods. It’s worth noting that such a condition is quite normal for children between 2-6 years. Scientists quip that such fear may have actually been a mechanism that protected the early man from potential poisonous foods. It was crucial for young children during those days to be cautious while foraging for food and, in the process, trying out new things.
Unfortunately, the longer we wait to try out new foods, the worse our pickiness gets. Our relationship with food is developed from an early age, which further influences our feeding habits. However, if you’re an adult and are picky, there still exists a ray of hope. You could widen your food horizon through the above-mentioned strategies.
Now, there are those adults who are pickier than others. Why is it so?
Genetics and Taste Buds
- Research findings indicate that food neophobia can be genetically transferred from parents to their kids, making them pickier than others.
- Children have more taste buds than adults. This makes a child’s taste more intense compared to an adult, hence being pickier. As they age, their taste buds wear off.
- Our genetic difference is another contributing factor. Certain foods taste different to us.
- Picky eaters have certain genes that dictate whether or not one can taste certain bitter compounds present in food. It determines whether they are able or not to withstand such intensities.
Environmental Exposure
Apart from genetic exposure, environmental exposure does greatly influence the extent of one’s pickiness.
- Parents who are picky and don’t like trying out various foods limit their children’s exposure to new foods. Their kids will likely develop picky eating habits.
- Ultimately, the only way to kick out picky eating habits is to expose yourself multiple times to an unfavorable or disliked food. Research studies put the number of exposure between 10-20 times before a picky eater finally embraces a certain type of food.
Exposure doesn’t necessarily mean tasting food. It ranges from simply seeing, touching or feeling, or smelling food. It could mean a friend, parent, or practically anyone eating a new type of food and expressing their feelings, experience, or sentiments towards it.
As we conclude, picky eating isn’t a strange phenomenon. Most parents seem to beat themselves up due to harrowing experiences with their kids. We hope that the above strategies go a long way in putting back the smiles at the dinner table and usher in a new wave filled with long-lasting and memorable experiences.
Meal Prep Recipes for picky eaters
Here are a few recipes that you might like that are simple and tastes great.
Air Fryer Chicken Strips Sugar Free Honey Mustard
Chipotle Chicken Bowl Meal Prep Recipe
Air Fryer Coconut Chicken Tenders Recipe
Jim Lopez, the founder and editor of The Meal Prep Ninja, shares his journey from a passionate bodybuilder and fitness enthusiast to a certified nutrition coach. Certified by Precision Nutrition, Jim aims to empower others with knowledge on meal prep and nutrition, offering resources for busy individuals to enjoy low-calorie, tasty foods. His blog is a community for sharing healthy eating habits and meal prep recipes
