The Picky Eater Project: 6 Weeks to Happier, Healthier Family Mealtimes

by Natalie Digate Muth, Sally Sampson

The Picky Eater 6 Weeks to Happier, Healthier Family Mealtimes is a one-of-a-kind book that can transform even the most finicky eaters into fledgling foodies. Focusing on kids’ participation, interactive strategies, kitchen experiments, and delicious kid-friendly recipes, the book is based on a six-week plan that makes shopping and cooking fun. Weekly themes and goals include

• Week 1 – Picky-Free Setting the stage to help your child choose a wider variety of healthful food with key parenting strategies
• Week 2 – A Kitchen Shaping your child’s taste preferences away from bland, white and processed towards flavorful, robust, and more adventurous by changing the way you purchase, arrange, and prepare foods.
• Week 3 – The Little Getting your child into the kitchen – early and often – to encourage him or her to try new foods.
• Week 4 – A Shopping Making grocery shopping and meal planning with your child more of an adventure than a chore.
• Week 5 – Family Recognizing the value of family meals and setting them up to fit your lifestyle while progressing in your pursuit of undoing picky eating.
• Week 6 – It Takes a Enlisting spouses, partners, grandparents, siblings, and friends to help undo picky eating and influence more adventurous choices.
• Post-Picky Eater Project Week – Making It Planning for challenges and barriers, and putting contingency plans into action for lasting impact.

Six weeks will fly by before you know it! You and your junior chef will have an amazing time working together to make

• Layered Yogurt Parfaits
• Corn Pancakes
• Mix and Match Smoothies
• Beanie Cheeseburgers
• (Almost) Any Vegetable Soup
• And many more fun and healthy recipes!

Written by Natalie Digate Muth, a pediatrician and dietician, and Sally Sampson, cookbook author and founder of ChopChop , a food magazine for kids and their families, The Picky Eater Project addresses both the importance of healthy childhood nutrition and family harmony. It offers tips and troubleshooting, recognizing that it takes planning and perseverance to make behavior changes stick, but that it can happen.

Start your picky eater project today – your kids will love it, and you’ll see real changes in their eating habits!

Genres: Parenting, Cookbooks, Nonfiction

227 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 2017

Reviews

[Alexis Voelker]

I got this book from the library on a whim. I’m not exactly sure who they think their audience is. It might be older kids, although they like to pretend they know toddlers. I mean, I had to laugh when at week 3, they suggest Vietnamese soup. Cmon! My kid doesn’t eat pizza, a turkey sandwich, ketchup or ranch etc, bc it is too many things at once, so why would a picky kid eat a really unfamiliar soup???

They did have a few tips that I thought were worth a shot. -Shopping with your kids (already do so it’s not a slam dunk idea like they hope it will be) but I haven’t tried having my kids pick out things for a specific meal.

-picking something similar in texture to what they already like. Chicken nuggets a favorite? Try fish sticks. Kids can be chill with that? Try baked fish. Do they like fries? Try sweet potato fries (although that does not work on adults either if my husband’s reaction is good enough evidence)

-cooking with your kids. This is not a new idea but I did appreciate they could admit that was really hard to do (am I the only one who doesn’t want to spend $70 for a special kids helper stool??? And I have a big kitchen but no one besides Joanna Gaines has a kitchen big enough to cook fajitas [week 4’s suggested recipe] while watching one kid dump the entire salt container out and make sure the other one isn’t grabbing all the knives). So the book suggested trying to do this just once a week.

I did also learn that not liking foods has a scientific term and is a developmental stage, it isn’t something a parent did wrong.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll be honest, I ended up skimming most of the second half. A lot of this was information that I've already researched myself (i.e. family mealtimes are good for kids, don't be a short order cook), or strategies that I've already tried that have failed (i.e. involve picky eaters in the meal planning/cooking processes).

This book seems to be geared towards families with kids that are only mildly picky. The family used as an example throughout the entire book had kids who would actually eat a handful of vegetables, and the parents just wanted to expand their repertoire. Me? We hit a new low in the ongoing Food Wars recently, when my oldest, who will only eat produce in the forms of pizza sauce, potato chips, and the occasional grape, wanted to come up with some ways to earn money towards a small toy. My husband offered him more than enough money if he would try one bite of dinner every night for a week. I even added that I'd allow him some say in what those meals would be. Guess what? He said he'd rather clean. With that being said, I don't think these strategies will work for my family.

[Clarissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was expecting to learn more about the psychology behind picky eating, this book wasn't helpful for my family at all as we are already a family that doesn't keep processed foods/high sugar in the house. I think this is only the second book I've given 1 star. I'm so happy it's a library book and I didn't waste my money.

[Guillermo Sparks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to follow. The strategies are for kids that are differently motivated and more mature than my kids.

[Lindsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unrealistic to think that a picky eater would become less so by giving them the foods and recipes in this book (exotic things). Not very helpful.

[Ginni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession: my kids are probably less picky than I am. I am simply clueless when it comes to nutrition, and like many people, the vegetables I grew up eating were the limp, squishy kind from a can. I eat cereal for most meals. But I want to change, because I don't want my kids to follow in my footsteps.

This book is a treasure trove for me. I don't do well with general advice (everything in moderation! Fiber is good! Check the nutrition labels!); I need things spelled out for me. This book does that and so much more. It's packed full of recipes (so far, every one we've made has been a hit). It explains how to decide if you should keep or toss a food. It has checklists and charts for everything I never knew I didn't know about food. And, yes, it also has good general principles to follow--things like not using food as a reward, how to avoid making food a power struggle, and how to get your kids excited about eating good food. I sticky-tabbed so many pages in this book that the tabs will probably not do me any good.

If I had one critique to offer, it would be that the anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter don't add much to the otherwise content-dense book. People who are already nutrition-savvy and are looking for more of the psychological aspect will probably be disappointed by the large amount of space devoted to nutrition. But those are minor complaints about a very useful tool. I may have technically finished this book, but I have a feeling I will be using it for a long time to come.

(I received a copy of this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish I'd found this book when my kids were little. There are some great ideas that would be best to implement in the elementary school years. Good recipes. A bit too late for my gang... Luckily my picky eaters are slowly growing into and have grown into healthy eaters as they've gotten older.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the book for our family. The best of what's in here is presented with more appeal and less pressure in Chop Chop magazine.