Fussy eaters – how to get your child to try nutritious food

While it's clearly important to supervise your children's diet, the trick is to be as covert about it as possible

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/may/06/fussy-eaters-child-nutritious-diet

• a paper published this year in the journal Appetite showed
  that children whose parents used restrictive feeding practices were more
  likely to fill their
  boots when allowed five minutes' access to forbidden foods.
• overt restriction, whereby the children know there's ice-cream in the
  freezer, and crisps in the snack cupboard, but they aren't allowed them,
  is unhelpful. It will most likely lead to kids fixating on these foods
  and wanting them really badly.
• covert restriction, on the other hand, is OK. This is where there are no
  palatable snacks (as the scientists call them) in the home, so there are
  no forbidden fruits to desire and feel resentful about being denied.
• When a parent is telling a child how much to eat," says Ventura,
  "they're not allowing the child to learn how to control their own
  eating." The academic literature implies that constantly telling kids
  how much they need to eat will diminish their ability to regulate their
  own intake by eating when hungry and stopping when full. "The child gets
  the message that their internal cues aren't important and external cues
  are important,"
• Furthermore, attempting to increase veg intake through bribery with
  pudding will also unhelpfully associate greens with chores and booby
  prizes in the child's eyes, while bigging up pudding as the best thing
  ever.
• the ideas of dietitian Ellyn Satter :
  (http://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/) division of responsibility:
  things that the parent can and should
  control and things the child can and should control. Parents can
  determine what food is offered (preferably an array of healthy foods),
  and when and where to eat – setting the structure and routine of meal
  times. Children can determine whether or not they want to eat and how
  much. If they don't want to eat very much, tell them that it's their
  choice and it's OK to eat in response to hunger and fullness cues, but
  if they don't eat at this meal, there isn't anything else coming until
  the next one – and hold them to it.
•