Four reasons why babies are picky eaters

It is said that babies are innocent and lovable, but they are really irritating when eating. They pout and shake their heads to refuse the delicious food, making every meal like a battle, with the baby dodging in front and the mother chasing behind. Is your baby a picky eater? If the picky eating behavior is not adjusted in time, it will lead to developmental delay, physical deterioration, and affect the baby's growth and development.

1. Misselection of calcium supplement products

In the early stages of calcium supplementation for babies, mothers are easily influenced by some advertisements and think that calcium supplements with sour and sweet flavors are more suitable for babies. Little do people know that the baby's taste buds are in a period of rapid development. The closer the taste of food is to breast milk, the more helpful it is for the development of the baby's taste buds. Excessive taste stimulation will cause the baby's taste buds to become unresponsive and lead to picky eating. Therefore, when preparing food for infants and young children, it is best to choose food that is unflavored or has a light milk flavor. For calcium supplementation, choose light milk flavored products, which your children will naturally love and you will get twice the result with half the effort.

2. Influenced by parents

Parents are role models for their babies, and babies are mirrors for their parents. Parents' eating habits can be seen from the baby's three meals a day. Whether the baby's dietary structure is rich and the nutrition is balanced, parents first need to set a good example. The baby's eating habits are greatly influenced by their family. Parents' seemingly unintentional comments on which dishes are delicious and which are not delicious, what they like to eat and what they don't like to eat will all be heard by the little ones. When one day the kindergarten teacher tells you that your baby is a picky eater, or when the health doctor measures your baby's height and finds it is below normal, your baby has lost at the starting line of "eating". To cultivate good eating habits for babies, parents must first set an example by changing and adjusting their own eating habits. At the very least, they should not show any special dietary preferences in front of their babies, and try to let them eat a variety of foods to ensure the nutrition needed for physical development.

3. Psychological factors

Babies are sometimes picky about food because of self-protection. People will have a sense of "strangeness" towards new things. Some babies will become curious because of the unfamiliarity and hope to crack and get the answer, but for sensitive and cautious babies, unfamiliarity will make them feel "fear", and the result is of course rejection. Indeed, for most babies, they are reluctant to try new foods because they don’t know whether the new food is safe. Babies only like familiar foods, and only when this food appears repeatedly on the table will they try it.

There is another explanation for picky eating, which is that babies who are gradually becoming independent hope to become more independent in another way - deciding what to eat by themselves! From the time babies are born until they learn to eat independently, they are always passive, which means they basically have no right to choose their own food. The only way is to spit out the food they don’t like from their mouths, but they still cannot fully control their own diet.

4. Food appearance and smell

In addition, if the baby has had a bad impression of a certain food, he or she will also reject this food. For example, if a baby eats leeks and celery, which are rich in crude fiber, during constipation, he or she will naturally associate these two vegetables with the disease after recovering from the illness. The appearance, smell, texture, etc. of certain foods will also affect the baby's food choices. This is why few babies like to eat radishes and bitter foods.