An expert explains what foods will keep children—including picky eaters—healthy and satisfied all season long.
Kids across the country are turning in their final assignments and thumbing through their yearbooks, replacing homework and tests with pool days and bonfires. But it’s not just schedules that change during the summer: Kids have different nutritional needs this time of year, too, says Dr. Krupa Playforth, a pediatrician and mom in Northern Virginia. Below, Dr. Playforth explains why kids’ diets should differ during the summer months and describes what foods can help parents meet those needs in a healthy and fun way.
KCM: How should a child’s diet differ from an adult’s? Are there any specific nutrients that we need more of when we’re growing?
Dr. Playforth: First, let’s talk about the things that should be the same for kids and adults. Everyone should focus on variety and moderation in their diet. In most cases, extremes are both unsustainable and less healthy.
Now, kids do have different nutritional needs than grown ups. As pediatricians, we focus a lot on growth and development, especially brain development. We want our children’s diets to optimize that as much as possible. Although the same basic nutrients are needed by grownups and kids, the amount of those nutrients will vary based on age, size, and activity level. I like to make sure my pediatric patients have a good balance of iron, fiber, healthy fat, healthy protein, and calcium, while also trying to minimize the amount of added sugar and saturated fat in their diets. They should also have a good balance of vitamins and folates. If you can have at least some of your meals where the plate is half fruits or vegetables, a quarter whole grains, and just under a quarter of protein, that’s probably getting the balance right.
What foods do you recommend to keep kids energized and full when they’re running around outside or on-the-go during the summer?
Fruits and vegetables are high in vitamins, fiber, and water. Summer seasonal fruits are really fun, especially if you’re able to buy them fresh or pick them yourselves. We just took our kids strawberry picking and they loved that. Although vegetables are our biggest nutritional powerhouses, fruits can provide a lot of the same nutrients—maybe not in the same amount, but if your child is actually eating them, then they’re still getting the benefits.
When you’re traveling, it’s easy to rely on convenience foods and sweets. That’s fine in moderation, but snacks that include some whole grain, protein, fiber, and healthy fat are more likely to be satisfying. Balanced snacks also provide sustained energy and help kids avoid a sugar crash. In our house, we’ll do apples with nut butter. We also like cheese, avocado, yogurt, hummus, and whole-grain crackers. Plain yogurt is a nutritional powerhouse, and it can be paired with anything. Sometimes we put sprinkles on plain yogurt to jazz it up, and my kids think it’s the best thing ever.
How might a child’s nutritional needs differ during the summer and the school year?
There’s a lot of variability in the summer in terms of activity and outside exposure. Some kids are outdoors the whole day at camp, on playdates, at the pool, and at the beach. They’re going to be expending a whole lot of energy and losing a lot of water, which should be replenished with water rather than soda, juice, or sports drinks.
There’s a separate cohort of kids who are on their screens all day. Their physical activity drops significantly during the summer, and it’s important to make sure that their intake stays balanced. Whether you’re a grown up or a kid, if you’re sitting at home all day, there’s a tendency to head toward the fridge or the pantry and snack. One way to make sure their intake is balanced is to decide what’s in the house. If you don’t buy it, it’s not there. I also like to make sure healthy snacks are visible and accessible, while things like candy and popsicles are in hard to reach places so you have to be very intentional about grabbing them.
The third difference in the summer is that it’s just fun eating. It’s so important to keep food fun and to recognize that part of eating is social. With the pandemic, we’re all aching for some normalcy and socialization. Family cookouts, ice cream, and going out to eat are all important and should be encouraged in moderation. You don’t want to nix all of that because you think it’s unhealthy; the social experience of eating is part of what we want to nurture.
What advice do you have for the parents of picky eaters? How can they help their kids enjoy more types of food?
Despite how different people’s lives can be, most parents at some point are likely to face a picky eater. For some kids, that’s more of a lasting phase than for others, but it’s always stressful.
I think about picky eating using the Ellyn Satter approach, which shifts your thinking as a parent. The reality is you only have so much control over the process when the person eating is not you. You and your child have two completely separate roles when it comes to mealtime. The parent decides what, when, and where food is served, while kids are allowed to decide whether and how much of it to eat. You have to have faith in your child to decide when they’re done without coaxing them, bribing them, guilting them, or tricking them.
Now, there are exceptions to this. There are some children who only consume 10-15 foods, or are not gaining weight well or have other underlying sensory issues. Those parents should reach out to their pediatrician and maybe a registered dietician to get help.
Millions of American struggle with eating disorders, including an increasing number of adolescents. How can parents encourage their kids to develop healthy relationships with food and nutrition at a young age?
Eating is a social experience and a cultural experience. We sometimes inculcate our own concepts of that into our children, even unintentionally. You can begin to build healthy habits in infancy, but if you don’t start at that stage, all is not lost. As parents, we want to try to change our practice of policing, commenting, and criticizing what our children eat. As a grown up, I’d hate it if another adult commented about my intake. We should try to change the focus of a mealtime to be about more than just what you’re consuming and instead focus on honoring our children’s preferences, limiting pressure, and teaching children that positive reinforcement and praise are unrelated to what or how much they’re eating.
But I want to be really careful about how we talk about eating disorders. I would hate for any parent whose child has one to feel like they did something incorrectly and led to the disorder. Eating disorders are usually very complex, very serious, and often multifactorial. It’s important for parents to recognize that they only have so much control.
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