Food art: a help or a hindrance for food-anxious children?

I am genuinely blown away by some of the imaginative ways some people can make art out of food. Just search ‘kids’ food art’ on Pinterest and you too will be blown away… from strawberry mice to boiled egg bees, it’s a veritable cornucopia of edible artistry.

I read a lot of blog posts and online articles containing advice for parents of ‘picky eaters’. I like to keep abreast of what parents are being told even though it does not always sit well with the way I work! One staple of ‘picky eating’ articles is the advice to ‘make food fun’; to use creative ways of presenting food in order to entice children to eat it. I thought I’d share my feelings about this particular tip because it’s not as straightforward as it may seem.

The risks:

 

1. Covert pressure

If you are serving food in a novelty way in order to raise the odds of your child eating it, they will almost certainly intuit that you want them to eat it. Because you do. Even this non-verbalised, perhaps unconscious desire can result in children feeling pressured. They are amazing at picking up on how we feel and what we want from them. When it comes to eating, children sensing that we want them to eat can increase anxiety and push them towards eating for external (because of you) reasons, not internal (because of their body) reasons. When you have gone to huge lengths to make the food appealing to your child, this can come across as ‘I REALLY want you to eat that’.

2. Overt pressure

Not everyone will be trying to hide how much they want their child to eat (as described above). Many parents consciously use verbal or physical encouragement alongside novelty presentation. This is totally understandable – I’m not judging, just trying to explain how this approach can backfire. If you are standing over your child and telling them to try one bit of the pretty flower petal, or to use their digger to pick up some mashed potato cement, this can feel pretty overwhelming and anxiety-provoking.

3. Taking it personally

Many parents already take food rejection kind of personally – again, this is understandable – feeding children is a very emotive thing! The more effort you have put into a meal and the more hope you have invested in your child eating it, the more the rejection of that meal can hurt. I love this facebook post from Paediatric Dietitian Natalia Stasenko of Feeding Bytes: she explains how to take the opposite approach to mealtimes with young children, where you keep your expectations realistic and understand that some food rejection is totally normal.

4. Excessive food focus

One of the hallmarks of family mealtimes that have gone a bit awry, is when all or most of the conversation is about what and how a child is eating. Or it’s about the food; how good it tastes / pretty it is / important for our bodies it is…. Too much focus on food can feel so awful for a child – read my interview with an adult ex-anxious eater for a powerful insight into this. Swap out food focus for social interaction and generally engaging with your child and each other.

5. Your food / my food

Are you using a toy digger to drive mashed potato around your plate? Has your broccoli  been fashioned into trees in the magic forest? I’m guessing not. When children are given food which looks different from what the adults are eating, the message is: “this food is for you, that food is for me”. This is not a helpful message when we are trying to build eating confidence.

“All food is for everyone, and we can all make our own decisions about what we are going to take and try”

Using food art constructively

It may sound like I am always 100% against food art – that I don’t see a place for kiwi caterpillars or palm trees made of bananas and apples. This isn’t the case.

“Getting kids involved in hands-on, creative play with food can be fab.”

It can be a really useful, pressure-free way to help children become more familiar with foods before they are ready to eat them. It can help children develop positive associations with food and it can help with sensory sensitivity too.

Simone Emery of Play With Food (the clue is in the same) has a ton of lovely activities and recipes for children to unleash their imagination upon. For example, her food sheep (complete with a printable) is awesome. As Simone points out, if your child doesn’t eat the finished results, that’s okay! This is all about valuable exposures.

So what is the difference here? Why am I all for making a cauliflower sheep with your child, but not serving said sheep when you’ve made it all by yourself?

It comes down to motivation. If you and your child get creative with the goal of helping them build their food confidence, that’s not about expectations that they will eat it. However, if you put time and effort into creating a masterpiece in order to tempt them to eat, that’s all about those expectations.

I often say that, as parents, we can’t fake it. As I described in relation to ‘covert pressure’ (above) we may think we’re hiding our frustration / anger / disappointment, but trust me, kids know. They can feel it. With expectations – even hidden ones – comes pressure and pressure is the enemy of a relaxed and responsive approach to feeding children.