What are the dangers of picky eating in children?

A child's body is in an important period of growth and development, and requires a large amount of nutrients to promote growth and development. If a child's picky eating or anorexia is serious, it will directly affect the child's growth and development, and will also cause some diseases. Therefore, parents must cultivate good eating habits for their children and balance the absorption of nutrients so that they can grow up healthier and happier.

Nutritional imbalance: The entire nutrition that a baby needs is like a seesaw. Only a balanced variety of foods can keep the nutritional seesaw balanced and ensure the baby's healthy and rapid growth and development. The nutrients in fish, meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruits and cereals have different emphases. Only by eating enough of these 7 types of food every day can you ensure that your baby gets adequate and balanced nutrition. However, the survey shows that babies with picky eating habits eat less of these 7 types of food, and some babies don’t like to eat 2-3 of them. Of course, their nutritional seesaw will be unbalanced. In addition, picky eaters often play while eating, and it often takes more than an hour to eat a meal, which not only affects the intake of nutrition but also causes gastrointestinal dysfunction.

Weight is not up to standard: Babies with picky eating habits will not get enough nutrition, which may lead to problems in growth and development. Insufficient intake of nutrients such as carbohydrates, protein and fat will result in low body weight and slower growth rate. The study found that the incidence of low weight in babies with picky eating habits is twice that of babies with normal diets.

Impact on intellectual development: Studies have found that the intelligence development index of normal babies is 14 points higher than that of picky eaters. Picky eaters are also more likely to show signs of inattention.

Poor resistance and easy to get sick: Due to unbalanced diet, picky eaters cannot get nutrition from food well to improve immunity, so they are more susceptible to diseases and often catch colds and fevers. In addition, babies with picky eating habits are also prone to anemia, rickets and other nutritional deficiency-related diseases.

Developing extreme personality: Mothers may not know that various foods also play an important role in the baby's personality development. Unbalanced nutrition is likely to cause the baby to develop an extreme personality. Studies have shown that babies who are malnourished during childhood are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior than babies who are well-nourished. In addition, parents often use inducement, scolding and other methods to force their babies to eat. This not only fails to correct the baby's picky eating, but also causes the baby to develop a rebellious mentality, which will make the parent-child relationship tense over time.

Children's picky eating and anorexia are generally divided into physiological and pathological. The pathological one refers to abnormalities in the child's body, which leads to the phenomenon of picky eating. As the disease improves, this phenomenon will disappear. Most picky eating habits are physiological and generally do not require drug treatment. Parents need to adopt some correct methods to help their children gradually change it.