Topics:

Food jags

A reluctance to try new foods can trigger a food jag

Teresa Pitman,

Originally published in Today's Parent February 2010

Send
Share

Stoned Wheat Thins. Tuna. Orange juice. For several months, that was just about all four-year-old Chris was willing to eat.

Once in a while, his mother, Lisa Tanner,* managed to coax him into eating a piece of fruit or a vegetable, but most of the time, he refused everything that wasn’t part of his preferred diet.

It’s called a food jag when a child decides to limit her diet to a couple of favourite foods. Registered dietitian Theodosia Phillips of Saskatoon says a couple of factors make food jags common among preschoolers. The first is a reluctance to try new foods, which in some kids leads to a reliance on just a few familiar and comforting items. The second is the dramatically slower growth in children over two, compared with infants, that allows them to limit their intake.

Phillips’ basic advice for worried parents of food-jagging kids “Don’t panic. It’s very rare that a child would go on a food jag that would cause any health problems.”

In fact, says Phillips, children are often eating more than you realize. “For example, if a preschooler ate one piece of French toast made with one egg, he’d already have eaten half of his daily requirement for protein and one-third of his grain requirement.”

* Names changed by request.

Subscribe to Today's Parent for just $14.95* That's only $1.25 an issue!