Food Chaining

My 5 year old son is a picky eater. He's not as picky as the children in Food Chaining: The Proven 6-Step Plan to Stop Picky Eating, Solve Feeding Problems, and Expand Your Child's Diet by Cheryl Fraker, Mark Fishbein, Sibyl Cox and Laura Walbert. There were a few things that I can take from this book. I can certainly think about better scheduling of his meals and snack times. I can get a better feel for the types of foods he likes and use that to expand his choices but that's about it.

I found myself skipping large portions of the book because it didn't apply to our situation. There's a lot of focus on underlying problems causing some kind of problem but my child doesn't have any of those issues. Even narrowing it down to a specific type of food isn't that helpful because he's got foods that he'll eat at his grandmother's house but won't touch here and vice versa.

There's also a lot of focus on babies and toddlers. My son was an excellent eater until he was about 3. Then he just started deciding he didn't like things. His diet had dropped down to just whole wheat bread and water but we were able to work it back up to be better balanced. When he started dropping out foods again I thought I'd try to find a way to stop the behaviour before he dropped too many. This book won't help me do that.

I also didn't like the focus on junk food. I don't want to introduce him to unhealthy food to get him to eat healthy food. I was hoping there'd be better advice on how to get fruits, vegetables and meats into his diet but he doesn't like McDonald's Chicken McNuggets and I'm fine with that.

I would've liked more food chain examples for more varieties of food. A better description of their food "types" so that I could figure out if it's a taste thing with him or something else. All in all I'm a little disappointed and can only really give this one a 2.