5 Steps to Prevent Your Kids From a Bad Relationship with Food

Did you know that you influence your child’s relationship with food every day? They watch when you eat, what you eat, and how you talk about food. This establishes their own relationship with food for a lifetime. 

Our overall goal is to teach kids that food is fuel. We need food to make our bodies feel their best. It’s not to make us happy, fix our bad days, or help us cope with stress. Although we can use it for all of those things sometimes, food should primarily be the nutrients our body needs.

The first 5 years are foundational for setting up a positive relationship with food (1). However, it’s never too late to address any unhealthy patterns or behaviors – even in adulthood. 🙂

What does a “bad” relationship with food look like?

1. Extreme Food Restriction or Obsession

Watch for you child severely limiting their food intake, eliminating entire food groups, or obsessing over calorie counting or dieting at a young age. This could be a sign of underlying issues such as body image concerns or even the early stages of an eating disorder.

2. Emotional Eating

Just like adults, children can sometimes turn to food as a coping mechanism for dealing with emotions such as stress, boredom, or sadness. And this is completely okay on rare occasions! However, if there’s a consistent pattern of using food as a primary means of comfort or distraction, it may indicate a problematic relationship with food.

3. Hiding or Sneaking Food

Concealing food or eating in secret can signify feelings of guilt, shame, or fear associated with eating. Children might engage in this behavior if they perceive certain foods as “forbidden” or if they fear judgment from others.

4. Negative Self-Talk

Pay attention to how your child talks about themselves in relation to food and body image. If they consistently express self-criticism or use derogatory language about their appearance, it may indicate they are struggling with body image issues or low self-esteem.

5. Avoidance of Social Situations Involving Food

Refusing to participate in social gatherings or events that involve food, or experiencing significant anxiety around meal times outside the home, can be signs of distress related to food and eating. This behavior may stem from fear of judgment, concerns about not being able to control their food choices, or discomfort with their body image.

5 Steps to Prevent a Bad Relationship with Food

1. Get rid of the reward system

This is SUPER common among parents: promising some candy if they do all their homework or bribing them to eat vegetables with a cookie for dessert. 

Although this might feel like a quick fix, this teaches kids to automatically see desserts as the “prize” and to see other food groups as the “punishment”. This morphs their view of food into a cycle of instant gratification and is associated with unhealthy food behaviors later in life (2).

For example, children hear all the time “try to finish all your broccoli, and then you can have ice cream”. They are smarter than we think! This sentence is full of underlying messages that broccoli is bad and ice cream is the yummy reward. 

Something to Try: Serve dessert on the same plate as dinner. Sounds crazy, I know! However, this teaches your kids that desserts are not a coveted trophy, but just a part of a well-balanced meal. 

2. Talk about hunger cues

This is an easy and subtle way to communicate healthy food patterns. Talk about your own hunger cues and demonstrate to your kids how you follow them. This teaches your kids how to listen to their bodies and not over/under eat. 

Something to Try: Next time at the dinner table, say “my tummy feels full, I might need to save this little bit for later” or “I’m still feeling hungry, I will get a little bit more then see how I feel”. It might seem trivial, but this will make your children think about their own hunger levels!

3. Remove food obsession

It’s easy for kids to get obsessed with food. Especially when they feel restricted or if certain food groups are thought of as “prizes” as we discussed before (4). Making all foods an option, but in moderation, is key to a healthy relationship with food. 

For example, if your child is begging you to buy Oreos every day – meltdowns, guilt trips, the whole 9 yards. You can tell them “of course we can try Oreos, but we aren’t going to get them all the time.” Get the Oreos once, experience the joy they bring, then move on. This can remove the obsession while also teaching them about moderation (1).

Give them the chance to practice moderation and don’t expect them to get it right every time. I know as adults we are still learning that as well. 🙂

Something to try: Ask your child about any new foods they’ve been wanting to try. Sounds simple, but kids can surprise us if they have a platform to voice their opinion. 

4. Normalize likes and dislikes

Kids need between 6 and 15 times seeing/tasting food to fully form a liking or disliking. This can be frustrating if it feels like they repeatedly reject food that you worked hard to prepare. 

However, try introducing 1 new food at a time. For example, put the new food on their plate with surrounding “safe food” you know they love. Also, instead of shaming or guilting them into eating all of the food, encourage one bite. This creates a more positive environment for trying new things, which is associated with more adventurous food behaviors (3). 

If you’ve tried it all, and they still do not like a certain food, that’s okay! Dislikes and likes are normal and should be respected by the family. You don’t need to worry about them liking every food you make, but rather maintaining a generally mixed diet. 

Something to try: If your child doesn’t want to take a bite of the food, try asking them to touch, smell, or lick the food. These are small steps toward trying new foods and can make dinner time feel less stressful and more like a fun science experiment.

5. Be a role model

Although it doesn’t feel like it all the time, you are extremely influential in your child’s life. Observation is one of their main methods of learning. 

Tasting new foods + Observing other’s food preferences = your child’s food choices (2)

So that means how you talk about food and treat food is very important. For example, if they see you come home from work and say “I had the worst day ever. I really need some ice cream to make me feel better, but I shouldn’t”. Again, this is full of clues to children about emotional dependence on food and food shame. 

Something to try: start small with changing the way you talk about food. Encourage yourself and your children to listen to their hunger cues, be kind to their body, and enjoy food as fuel.

I hope these tips and tricks were helpful! If you want more information about improving your child’s relationship with food, check our my other posts on picky eating.