The Doughnut Gatherer

http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/June-2009/The-Doughnut-Gatherer/

A member of my preemie forum passed along this article about what happens when a food critic has a child who hates food. It's gotten quite a laugh on our forum both for it's witty writing style and the all-too-familiar struggle of a child who won't eat.

It made me think about the lengths we have gone to find foods the girls will eat. First of all, I have found myself feeding Natalie and Abby foods I always swore I never would. For instance, today, at Walmart, I bought them a 4-piece chicken nugget happy meal with apple wedges. Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence. McDonald's chicken nuggets are my fall back food when we are out and about. Usually, if I'm lucky, they will eat half of one each and a few french fries. Today, however, I am extraordinarily pleased to report that between the two of them the girls ate all the apple wedges and all four chicken nuggets (except the parts that were chewed up and spit out, thrown over board, or fell through the holes of the cart - probably at least one nugget total). Then they each ate a few of my fries too. I was pretty excited.

Here's a sampling of other things I have done in an effort to get them to eat:

* Spent 30 minutes on the cereal aisle trying to find the finger-food cereal whose serving (which they will never eat) is 120 calories instead of 110 calories. That way we can maximize the 4 or 5 pieces of cereal they might eat.

* Ditto on the yogurt aisle, baby food aisle, granola bar aisle, cookie aisle, and juice aisle.

* Left a store with $30 worth of food for the girls to try to discover later they wouldn't eat any of it.

* Found a food they would eat and offered it ad nauseum for as long as they would eat it. We did this with a yogurt they liked for a week or so; sausage which they used to eat but now only take a few bites; milk from a sippy cup - they stopped drinking milk from their sippy cups when we switched to soy - now they will only drink water, and Abby, some juice; granola bars - oats and honey, 95 calories each - they were eating 2 a day, begging for them like they were crack for about three weeks. The bars offered this morning on the way to PT were slightly nibbled on and discarded. I guess we are done with them. So far, the only food they haven't rejected from over-use is Ya-Ya's chicken and rice soup. More baby crack. They LOVE this stuff. I have to add, though, they will only eat Ya-Ya's. They won't touch it if I make it. Right now I am offering it 1 to 2 times a day and it's about the only thing they will eat right now at home.

* Allowed them, heck, encouraged them to eat foods full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup (which is, of course, okay in moderation), additives, and ingredients I couldn't pronounce because they had the most calories. Chicken nuggets dipped in copious amounts of BBQ sauce, various fruit/granola/cereal/cookie bars, ice cream, and the past few days, the German Chocolate cake I made for my mom's birthday.

* Added butter, olive oil, duocal, and benecalorie to perfectly good foods to turn them into oily messes in hopes that each of the expected 4 bites will have as many calories as possible. I even added a scoop of duocal to their water two days ago.

*Actually bemoaned the fact that my girls love fruit: peaches, apples, cantelope, grapes, bananas...they eat them up. Of course, fruit has very few calories.

* Much to my horror, I have two two-year olds that still get 4 bottles a day. Never in my wildest dreams...well, at least they are sucking on pacifiers all day. (They rejected those since they were several months old. I'm sure they knew they would benefit their sucking reflex and possibly help them eat better.)

What is it they say...never say never...