Food Chaining: Expand Diet..Oh the Possibilities

Building on what Alicia had to say...preferred foods are your platform for expanding the child's diet. A child that eats only snack food all the time feels horrible. He is undernourished. But you cannot just say to him, "Eat this from now on." It won't work. Food Chaining gives you a plan to expand the diet. You really have to study what the child eats and how it feels in your mouth all the way through the process of chewing and swallowing. That is why we wrote up the food chaining intake in the back of the book, you mark what your child eats and it gives you a description of his
taste/texture and temperature preferences. We then give you ideas of how to expand his tolerance of new foods. Studying what your child eats well is very important. How does it feel to touch it or feel on your tongue? Taste? Sound? How does the food item change when chewing begins? Does it have an after-taste? Keep going back to the child's individualized eating profile and study the ratings of food to keep expanding the diet. We don't really look at food as junk food. We look at those foods to find cues how to expand the diet because for some reason, these things work.

Candy (chocolate) can become chocolate milk shakes, chocolate chip muffins or pancakes, a chocolate fondue for fruits, chocolate covered pretzels, peanut butter cups can lead to eventually eating peanut butter

Gummy bears..can become fruit roll ups and be a platform for talking about fruit flavors, fruit filling inside PopTarts can be compared to jelly or jams, you can make your own fruit puree to finger paint with or eat, fruit flavors can be expanded to end up in frozen fruit bars, smoothies, shakes or breads/muffins. Dips such as caramel that at one time your child may have liked in a candy bar can be used to mask the flavor of fruits. Powdered sugar can be used as well. Gradually reduce the amount of these dips/condiments and help your child adjust to the tastes of fruits.

Chips can become Veggie Stix, sweet potato or vegetable based chips or apple chips and dried fruits. Potato chips or french fries can become sweet potato fries and you can expand potato products to work your way toward a variety of baked fries, or even baked potato (maybe with cheese sauce or french onion dip or seasoned salt or garlic salt to make it more palatable). Some children never get to that type of texture but there are many ways to expand the diet based on that individual child's preferences.

Soda can become an ice cream float and gradually reduce the amount of soda to work toward a healthier drink and eventually work your way to drinkable yogurt or flavored milk...the possibilities are endless