Hard to swallow on Home Services

Jan

Hard to swallow

posted by admin in Window Cleaning

I never cook for one of my best friends. It’s just too irritating watching her surreptitiously pick out the mushrooms/onions/capsicums or whatever offends her and hide them around her plate. She won’t touch Brazil nuts (something about a fuzzy feeling in her mouth) and a banana will never pass her lips. She doesn’t seem to eat meat or chicken but she’s never said she’s a vegetarian and she’ll eat the sauce from a chicken curry.

I’ve always found her toddler-like eating habits amusing, but fussy eating in adults can be serious. At worst, sufferers of “Adult Picky Eating” can be malnourished and socially isolated as they withdraw from situations where their odd habits might be exposed.

Extreme picky eating is apparently on the rise. It attracted extra attention in the UK this year with the release of two reality television shows on the subject.

Entire websites have also been set up for sufferers to compare notes on why the word “pretzel” can make them gag or the smell of chilli sauce can induce vomiting (check out www.pickyeatingadults.com, www.adultpickyeaters.co.uk, www.adultpickyeatersuk.wordpress.com).

The problem with adult picky eating is not childish stubbornness but genuine revulsion. While most of us can enjoy literally thousands of foods and food combinations, serious picky eaters may be able to stomach only 20 to 30. And the ones they can’t eat (frequently vegetables in all their forms) are considered overwhelmingly disgusting, often on the grounds of texture ? too crunchy or slimy, chewy or sticky, crumbly or slippery.

While picky eating is not recognised as a clinical eating disorder, it has been linked with obsessive compulsive disorder and autism. No one knows exactly what causes it ? some people appear to have a strong sensitivity to taste and texture or an over-active gagging reflex. Others may have had traumatic early experiences with food. A third theory is that a critical developmental window is missed in childhood (see panel).

One top baby feeding expert from Unicef recently grabbed headlines by controversially claiming that spoon-feeding pureed foods to babies is unnatural, unnecessary and may cause health problems later in life. Her view: infants should go straight from milk/formula to solids without that sloppy muck in between.

Auckland dietitian Anna Richards, who specialises in treating children with allergies, doesn’t go that far ? but she does say that children are developmentally ready for soft lumps and to start chewing from eight to 10 months.

Offering lots of different textures is even more important than flavour from this point. “It doesn’t matter if they don’t have teeth ? those gums are tough!” she says. “If we miss that developmental stage it is often hard work encouraging texture later on.”

Many parents worry that solid foods will make their baby choke, but Richards points out that the gag reflex is there for a reason and works well. It’s also normal to spit out some foods.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t like them ? just that they are a bit of a surprise,” she says.

Better to get over the surprise in infancy than spend the rest of your life refusing to eat it.

how not to raise a picky eater

Dietitian Anna Richards has three key pieces of advice for instilling good eating habits in your infant.

When introducing solids, gradually progress from thin pur?to thick pur?to mash. At around eight to nine months you can start adding textures such as rice bubbles or fruit. Next, move on to raisins in little packets, frozen or fresh corn kernels or peas, baked cubes of root vegetables, chopped fresh fruit, cooked chopped or minced lamb/chicken/beef, chopped canned fruit, rice-based pasta shapes. Even a relatively young baby will savour sucking on a lamb chop or gumming a length of corn on the cob.

Let them make a mess. It’s all about exploration and discovery ? insisting your baby eat from a spoon or cleaning up fanatically around her will only irritate her and potentially set up poor eating habits.

Don’t fret about quantity. “A healthy baby will never starve themselves,” says Richards. “If you’re worried try offering a good selection of finger foods plus a serve or more of eating-efficient foods such as mashed veggies or fruit or yoghurt to keep you both happy. Pay particular attention to making snack times as nutritious as meal times ? sandwiches, fruit, veggies, cheese etc. It’s what goes in over the whole day that counts.”

Tags: anc, cleaning, Development, Different, discovery, health, levi, lt, trove