My Child Won’t Eat Anything But Carbs: Should I Be Worried?
As a baby, my son was an adventurous eater. He happily ate most of the food I offered him, including a variety of fruit and vegetables and proteins, like meat, poultry and fish.
When he turned two, it was like a light-switch turned off, and he suddenly displayed much more selective eating.
Even though I continued to offer a variety of foods, he seemed to reach for the beige food at the table during meals and snack times.
Another thing he began doing as a toddler was only eat one kind of food from what I offered.
Before, as a baby, where he would be likely to eat multiple foods from what I gave him, he now seemed to only select one food from the meal that he would eat.
I distinctly remember one particular family dinner where I had set out a plate of cut watermelon slices, along with a chicken stir-fry, steamed rice, and milk. Because we serve meals family style, he was allowed to pick what he wanted to put on his plate and eat.
I kid you not - he literally only ate watermelon that night. I watched him eat slice after slice, carefully lining up the watermelon rinds on his plate. He had about eight slices of watermelon before he announced that his tummy was full and that he was done eating.
More recently at a big family gathering, he spotted the bowl of rolls on the table and only wanted to eat bread. Out of all the food available that night, he was perfectly content with eating 2 bread rolls, and that was it.
Can you relate to a similar situation with your own child?
Maybe your child only eats certain foods or your child eats only carbs.
Maybe, like my son, your child will only select one specific food from the meal that you’ve offered or your child won’t eat anything outside of what is familiar to her in that moment.
It can be unnerving for parents to see these eating behaviors in their own children, even frustrating or concerning.
Many parents that I work with on this issue are especially concerned about how their children’s selective eating may impact their overall health and ability to grow.
Shouldn’t kids be eating a variety of foods to optimize their health and nutrition?
Understanding Normal Eating Patterns in Kids
Because my son is not my first rodeo, I have learned enough at this point to understand that his eating behaviors were actually normal and not something to get alarmed over. But I know this is not the case for the majority of parents who watch their kids go through the same thing.
This can be especially hard if your child used to enjoy eating a variety of foods but now has a handful of accepted foods.
One important thing to do in these situations is to take a step back to see what might your expectations for your child, in terms of eating, and to understand whether or not your expectations are reasonable.
As parents, it’s common to have unreasonable expectations in regards to what we think our children should be able to do.
Nowhere is this more true than with eating.
For example, you might have the expectation that your child should be eating a variety of foods at meal times. Or that they should be eating a vegetable with every meal, or drinking so much milk, or eating fruit instead of candy, etc.
First, where are these expectations coming from? Maybe you were raised this way, or maybe a health professional told you that your child should be eating in a specific way to avoid adverse health issues down the road.
Maybe you see how your friends’ kids eat and think your kids should eat in the same way. Social media and our rampant diet culture often infringe rigid ideas and expectations when it comes to feeding kids as well.
All that to say, you are likely carrying some kind of expectation in regards to how your child should be eating. If your child is not eating to your expectations, this gap can create stress, frustration, and concern for you and your family.
This is why it’s necessary to understand what are actual normal and expected eating patterns in children to help you adjust any potential unrealistic expectations that may be dampening your family’s eating experiences.
Busting the Myth of the “Balanced” Plate
At the end of the day, we can’t control the type of food our kids will gravitate toward, nor can we be expected to ensure that they will always eat in a balanced way.
This is simply an unrealistic expectation that will create more frustration and stress, for you and your child.
It’s easy to think about a child’s intake in a 24 hour clock, and in doing so, there’s a desire to want to micromanage what they’re eating in that time period.
Many parents have a running checklist in their heads throughout the day of what their child ate, where they are mentally checking off the boxes and food groups: Did they eat vegetables today? Check. Fruits? Check. Protein? Check.
The problem is that kids don’t typically eat in this pattern.
The expectation that your child will eat in a balanced way will create undue stress at mealtimes when your child doesn’t eat in this manner.
One single meal cannot be taken as a snapshot of a child's nutritional intake. Not even one day, really.
A child's food intake will naturally balance out over time to meet the individual nutritional needs he or she has.
In fact, having a "balanced" meal can be quite unreasonable for a child, especially in the terms through which we define balance.
For a child, balance might very well look like having a carbohydrate rich meal(s), followed by meals where other foods are preferred, like protein or produce.
While you might naturally gravitate toward filling your plate with a variety of foods, we can't hold these arbitrary standards to kids who aren't used to eating in this manner. Adjusting your expectations to the reality in which your child regularly eats can make for a much more peaceful eating.
When we hyperfocus on the minutiae of nutrition and food, it can distract and deter us from building the positive feeding interactions with our children that are more important for their overall health.
Lowering our expectations of what kids can realistically do (and eat) at family meals can help prevent unnecessary pressure and stress.
It's helpful to remember that your children are their own individual people with personal preferences, tastes, feelings, etc.
They are learning, building autonomy and independence, and exploring their world. It's easy to believe that food is something we have control and authority over because it's something tangible.
While we should be in charge of what we're providing and offering our children at mealtimes, deciding what and how much they eat is not our job.
Remember that your children are the best experts of their own bodies, and their food choices and appetites can and should be trusted - even when it goes against your own expectations.
Even your pickiest eaters have the ability to self-regulate what they need to eat, and their bodies' innate cues are largely guiding their food choices.
Surrendering that element of wanting control over this is a crucial piece to finding peace and joy at mealtimes and to ending the power struggles that you might be experiencing with your child.
SO what can you control or what should you focus on if you can’t, in fact, control that your child isn’t eating in a “balanced” way?
Focusing On Your Feeding Responsibilities
More effective than micromanaging the foods your child may or may not be eating is focusing on your responsibilities with feeding.
What does this mean?
Parents provide. Child decides.
This means that as a parent, you are in charge of providing structured meals and healthy snacks to your child on a consistent basis.
Essentially, you are responsible for the what, when and where of eating.
Your child, on the other hand, is in charge of whether or not she wants to eat from the meals and snacks you have provided, as well as how much she wants to eat from the food options you have given her.
This is the foundation for building a trusting feeding relationship between you and your child, which can help promote more positive eating experiences.
As a parent, you are taking the leadership with feeding when you are reliably providing regularly scheduled meals and snacks for your child.
Within this context, you are giving your children autonomy with eating by letting them eat as much or as little as they want at those regularly scheduled eating times. This also means you are letting them decide what they want to eat from the food you have provided.
That means it they only eat the bread from the dinner meal - that is okay.
Similarly, if they only decide they want to drink milk or eat the fruit or dessert, that is okay, too.
Outside of your feeding responsibilities, it’s not your job to get your child to:
Eat in general (yes, even if your child decides not to eat, that is okay)
Eat a certain amount of food
Eat specific food groups, like vegetables or meat
Allowing your child to do her part with eating and not forcing your expectations on her can be instrumental for your child to feel better about eating.
You can trust your kids to eat, even when:
They choose not to eat
They gravitate toward one food group
They only eat one food from the meal you’ve offered
They like bland or beige food
They don’t eat the veggies or protein
They only select carbs from the meal provided
When you can continue to feed your children from a place of trust, you can help create more positive eating experiences.
This is what is most important for them to build a healthy relationship with food and to have confidence with eating and in their bodies.
What does it mean to feed with trust?
It means to stay in your lane with your feeding responsibilities to allow your children to do their jobs with eating - even if they way they are eating looks different from your expectations.
If you’re begin crossing out of your lane by micromanaging what or how they eat, this can create many more problematic issues down the road around food for your children.
Because at the end of the day, the goal is not to get kids to eat in a “balanced” way; the more important outcome is to help kids have positive experiences with food.
Rather than reacting toward these behaviors with alarm or fear, it’s important to give your child a safe space to explore food and to figure out what feels best in his body.
Mistaking a child’s normal eating pattern for picky eating when in fact, it is normal for kids to go through these phases or eat in this manner
My Child Will Only Eat White Foods - Why?
If your child only eats beige food, foods of one color, never eats vegetables, or only likes eating the starchy things on his plate - your child is NORMAL.
These eating behaviors, including toddlers who refuse to eat altogether, are normal and expected and often parallel with the different stages of developments kids go through.
As children grow and develop greater exploration with their senses, they may be more aware about different characteristics about food that might take them more time to process.
This is why we might commonly see a child who was previously an adventurous eater as an infant become more selective.
The other thing to remember is that eating is a skill that involves all the senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and sound.
There is a lot for your children to learn and process about the complexities of many different foods. At the end of the day, they need time to learn how to eat in the same way that they would need time to learn any other skill, like riding a bike.
Some foods, especially vegetables, fruits, certain proteins, like meat, and complex dishes, can be more challenging for a child to learn to eat because the sensory input may be overwhelming.
For this reason, you might see your child gravitate toward simpler foods, including many carbohydrate-rich or bland foods, like breads, cereals, and pastas.
But just because your child will only eat these foods doesn’t mean you should stop exposing them to other foods or try to get them to eat certain foods.
If kids are pressured to eat something, even with good intentions, it can make them feel unsafe with eating or trying foods, which can create aversions to those foods in the long run or distrust with their primary caregivers.
For these reasons, it’s important to continue offering a variety of foods and textures without any pressure to eat those foods, alongside with a food component that your child may feel safe and comfortable eating.
Other reasons that your child might commonly gravitate toward eating one type of food might include:
Normal appetite fluctuations expected in childhood
Sickness, illness, or teething
Times of transition, like moving, starting school, traveling, etc.
If a child is feeling overwhelmed with food options or choices
OR, there may be no other influencing factor outside the fact that your child may be exhibiting NORMAL eating patterns!
Remember that this is expected eating behaviors for kids, and that is okay, too!
Child Eats Only One Food - Health Issues?
Common concerns I hear from parents about this issue involve health concerns, and I get it.
Many parents worry that their children won’t grow properly or have adverse if they tend to eat only one type of food and/or food group, if they don’t eat vegetables, if they don’t get enough protein, etc.
The truth is that your kids have the innate ability to self-regulate the food they need to grow at a rate that is best for them.
They are born with this programming, and there is nothing that you need to do to try to “fix” this.
That means that again, if you focus on your job with feeding, your children will do what’s best for them with eating.
They will select the foods from what you have provided that best meet their nutritional needs over time.
This is not going to happen in one meal or one day.
It takes consistency with you providing regularly scheduled meals and snacks that offer a variety of foods without any pressure to eat those foods.
And YES, this will happen naturally for your children, even if they go through periods where they gravitate toward eating carbohydrates or one type of food group.
So if it’s not enough to look at your children’s food choices alone as a marker of their health and nutrition, what can you look at?
Some of the main things to look for in your children is steady and sustained growth to see if they are growing and gaining weight appropriately at a rate that is right for them.
How do I know if my child is growing and gaining weight appropriately?
Growth charts can be helpful to determine this. Just remember that where your child’s growth is on her growth chart is not telling of her growth.
What’s most important with growth charts is to see a steady continuum of growth along her individual growth curve, wherever that might be.
It’s also important to see how your child is doing in other aspects of her life.
Is she meeting her developmental milestones as expected for her? How is she doing emotionally, mentally, and in her relationships?
These factors are helpful for understanding how your child might be doing with food.
Potential red flags or reasons to be concerned about your child and to reach out for professional help may include:
Weight problems, including weight fluctuations, weight loss or weight plateau
If you suspect an eating disorder
If your child stops eating altogether
If your child has any behavioral, medical, or cognitive issues that have made eating and feeding challenging for you and your child
If at any point you are concerned about how your child is eating, please speak with your doctor or connect with me today.
As a pediatric feeding specialist and registered dietitian for kids, I would love to connect with you and learn more about how I can help.
Tips to Help You Navigate Situations in Which Your Child Only Eats One Food
My kids have all gone through phases where they gravitate toward primarily one food group, especially carbs and starchy foods. As a mother myself, I can definitely understand how concerning this can be.
As a feeding specialist, I can also assure you one of the best things you can do for your children and their overall health is to create positive eating experiences - for them and for you.
This means zooming out far enough to see the big picture and remember that good health and nutrition goes far beyond just the food itself.
If you’re currently navigating this feeding situation with your own child that has proved troublesome to you, please know that you are not alone. Most importantly, you are NOT a bad parent.
Keep these things in mind to help you and your family bring more JOY back to eating (no matter how your child eats):
Preserve Trust in the Feeding Relationship, Even When Things Seem “Out of Balance”:
The most important step here is to build and preserve trust in your feeding relationship with your child. This can primarily happen when you trust your kids to do their part with eating and you stick to your jobs with feeding.
Another critical aspect of this is to be responsive to your children when it comes to food and their bodies.
In a nutshell, this means being in tune with and respectful of your kids’ innate feeding cues and abilities and recognizing that feeding is not just for nourishment, but for reassurance, trust, and nurturing between kids and their caregivers.
When you are able to feed your child with the goal of being a responsive feeder rather than with an agenda to get her to eat in a certain way, you are cultivating a foundation for a positive relationship with food.
2. Let Go of Any Unrealistic Feeding Expectations and Hidden Agendas:
In order to feed your kids with trust and to help them build confidence with food, it’s necessary to let go of any of your expectations and hidden agendas with food.
This includes things like wanting your child to eat a certain amount of food or particular foods.
Remember that when it comes to feeding kids, hidden agendas and unrealistic expectations can be your worst enemy.
No one can determine what your child’s eating will look like except your child.
That means you can let go of all of that well-meaning advice to give your children the space they need to simply be who they are and eat in the way they need to best support their growth and bodies.
3. Focus on Creating Positive Mealtime Experiences:
Rather than focusing on the minutiae of meals, eating and nutrition, try to think more about how you can create positive eating experiences for your children.
Building a trusting feeding relationship with your kids will naturally help take stress out of mealtimes and bring more joy back to eating.
Another way to help facilitate more enjoyable mealtimes is to take the attention away from the food. I encourage parents to talk about anything at the dinner table aside from food.
Removing the focus away from food will help give your kids the space the need to eat on their own terms. It will always serve as a reminder to YOU to not hyperfocus on what/how your children are eating.
Having some simple table games or traditions that your family does at mealtimes can also help make the eating experiences more enjoyable for you and your kids.
Lastly, if you have a child that has sensory sensitivities with food or is a highly selective eater, I recommend allowing your child to play with food.
While this may seem counterintuitive, remember that kids learn about their environment through play. Allowing them to engage with food without any pressure to have to eat that food can actually build their confidence and skills with new foods.
At the end of the day, it’s not your job to get your child to eat, but rather, to create positive experiences around food and eating.
Ccheck out this post here for more ways to support a child or picky eater who is learning how to eat new foods.
4. Continue Offering Variety at Meals and Snacks With No Pressure to Eat:
A common mealtime mistake I see when kids gravitate toward one food group or only a handful of foods is this: Parents can have the tendency to only serve those foods because they know their kids will eat them.
But what will happen if a child then rejects those foods? The options of what they will eat will quickly dwindle and diminish over time, creating more food stress.
More importantly, kids will not learn how to eat other foods beyond their favored few if they don’t have repeated exposure to other foods.
So what can you do instead?
Remember that YOU are in charge of what, when, and where to serve food. You are in charge of the menu and the meals that you’re providing to your child.
You can be considerate of their preferences and likes without catering to them.
This means that you should still continue to offer a variety of foods and textures along with a food component that your child feels safe and comfortable eating.
This might include bread, fruit, milk, pasta, etc.
If your child can see and identify at least one food component that feels familiar and safe and isn’t pressured to eat anything, this will help build confidence and comfortability around food.
How Your Child Eats Doesn’t Define You As a Parent
Parents - just remember how your children eat is NOT a reflection of you.
You are still a good parent, even if your child is picky or selective or doesn't want anything to do with the latest dish that you’re excited about eating. You are more than how and what your child eats.
What's most important is that the feeding interactions you have with your child are based on trust and that you're able to create a safe space for your child to learn, explore, and build positive interactions around food.
At the end of the day, this is what matters most, far beyond the minutiae of what was eaten or how much was eaten.
Letting go of your own expectations with how you think your kid should eat can give them space to have positive eating experiences.
There is no one way of eating that will ensure perfect health outcomes for your child.
What is more important for their overall mental and physical health over the long and short term is to have positive eating experiences around food.
This can’t happen if you’re trying to micromanage how and what they eat.
Bottom line here: Don’t let unrealistic eating expectations create feeding malfunctions.
There is no morality attached to how our kids eat. We need to let go of a wrong or right way of labeling how our kids eat. When we can let go of this, it will be easier to focus on our jobs with feeding.
One final thing to keep in mind is to navigate this process with curiosity rather than criticism - for yourself.
This means, give yourself space to explore the feelings and emotions that might be coming up for you as you feed your own children.
Feeding kids is hard, and it often brings up things that are uncomfortable and painful to experience or deal with.
It’s also easy to project your own feelings on how you feed your kids.
Remember that you can heal from your past to help your child build a positive relationship with food. It takes some willingness to lean into any of the discomfort that may be coming up for you.
In doing so, you are giving your kids the space they need to eat in a way that best supports their body and individual growth.
What questions do YOU have about this topic? Please feel free to leave a comment below. As always, know that you’re not alone in this feeding and parenting journey, and you are the best parent for YOUR child.