won't eat help!!!!!!

amother

Wheat

Tue, May 12 2015, 1:52 am

My 18 month old was never a good eater. At this point he is hardly eating anything. He may even be undernourished. (Not gowing or gaining weight). Btw junk food he will eat anytime. (Like cake of chocolate). Any advice please????

amother

Salmon

Tue, May 12 2015, 2:17 am

I had the same with my DD. Now she's 4, and still doesn't eat loads.
A few pieces of advice -
1. Get an appointment with a nutritionist. I was skeptical at first, I thought all she'd say was make sure she eats this and that, and stuff that I couldn't make her eat, but she had advise as to how to make the food that she does eat more caloric.
2. You can buy nutritional treats - eg. health bars from health shops, etc. That way, even though he's eating something sweet that he likes, it will still have some nutrition. Or homemade cookies made from dates, tehina (very good for you), whole wheat flour, etc.
3. When my DS (now 15) was a toddler, he also didn't eat - there was a stage where the only thing he would eat was a certain type of pink yoghurt. And I remember a nurse saying to me - even if that's the main thing he eats, give him tastes of other things the whole time, because if one day he decides he doesn't want the yoghurts anymore, you'll be stuck.
4. You can add polycose to his food. In Israel you buy it with a prescription - it's a powder, that adds calories. I mixed it in with my DS's porridge, yoghurt, mashed potatoes, whatever she ate. Sometimes I thought possibly she could detect the taste, so I added less, but always some, to everything.

And don't stress. It can cause a lot of stress. I shout at my other kids when they talk to my DD when she's eating "don't distract her/ move away" etc - and my husband and I would get mad with each other if one of us was home and didn't manage to get her to eat anything. And I would get mad with my in-laws for giving her a cookie, etc. It is stressful.

Best of luck!!

MagentaYenta

Tue, May 12 2015, 2:29 am

amother wrote:

What does your pediatrician say about this? Did the Dr. diagnose your child as undernourished?

chani8

Tue, May 12 2015, 4:03 am

Give lots of cake, just make it low sugar and add some zucchini in it, and make sure to use healthy olive oil and lots of it.

amother

Wheat

Tue, May 12 2015, 8:33 am

[quote="chani8"]Give lots of cake, just make it low sugar and add some zucchini in it, and make sure to use healthy olive

Op here. Any recipes on healthy cake, cookies, and muffins?

chani8

Tue, May 12 2015, 9:05 am

Sure! Spice and Spirit's "Black Devils Food Cake" page 356 in my version. Use half the sugar and skip the last two ingredients (almond extract and cherries). Add two cups of shredded zucchini to the liquid bowl before adding in the dry ingredients. Yummy and very chocolatey cake.

amother

Maroon

Tue, May 12 2015, 1:23 pm

You can take high calorie healthy foods and hide them in other foods. I recently made a delicious, healthy fudgy brownie with its base being a jar of almond butter, so the brownie ends up actually being a protein with calcium and healthy fats. I got it off the website Elanaspantry.com and slightly tweaked it to use standard ingredients. It's really good Smile

Here's the recipe:
1 (16 ounce) jar creamy roasted almond butter
2 large eggs
1 and 1/4 cups honey
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon (sea) salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

Instructions

In a large bowl, blend almond butter until smooth with a hand blender
Blend in eggs, then blend in honey and vanilla
Blend in cocoa, salt and baking soda
Grease a 9 x 13 inch baking dish
Pour batter into dish
Bake at 325 for about 40 minutes

Here's the original recipe: http://elanaspantry.com/brownies/

You can also make alot of delicious recipes using avocado in smoothies, puddings etc. You can check out weelicious.com for healthy kiddie recipes.

On another note giving your child a good daily multivitamin is supposed to help with increasing appetite. Also giving probiotics (acidophalus, bifidus) I'm assuming would be very beneficial too (especially if he's ever had antibiotics), as having too much of the yeast bacteria in the gut can make him be craving sweets and not be interested in healthy foods.

Good luck!
(anonymous because I've been talking about this brownie recipe alot recently)

amother

Emerald

Tue, May 12 2015, 4:56 pm

I also had an issue with my toddler at that age. He would barely eat anything the entire day and would always act up since he was so hungry. He would sometimes even wake up from hunger in the middle of the night and would still refuse to eat. Our entire life was focused on getting him to eat something.
My doctor insisted that he was healthy and I just needed to learn to feed him better.

Eventually I found another doctor and had him tested for allergies; it turned out that he was allergic to several foods that may have caused him stomach pain. We took him off several foods and he is now a different child - happy and content.

I would suggest that you test him for both allergies and celiac disease. It's generally a good idea to rule out any medical issues before you move forward with other ideas.

Dolly Welsh

Tue, May 12 2015, 5:02 pm

Chani8, are you back on the job? Hurray!

Dolly Welsh

Tue, May 12 2015, 5:07 pm

Yes, nice recommendation, this seems to have toddler recipes at the bottom of the page. I have not tried any.

http://weelicious.com/

smss

Tue, May 12 2015, 6:28 pm

so is he just picky? he developed a taste for sugar and anything else tastes bad to him?

little_mage

Tue, May 12 2015, 8:35 pm

I really, really like the blog It's Not About the Nutrition. The author is a nutritionist, so she has credentials. It's not about exactly what your kids are eating, but it's about how to get them to eat a variety of (primarily) healthy foods.

mandr

Tue, May 12 2015, 11:06 pm

There's a book "My Child Won't Eat" by Carlos Gonzalez. Give that a read.

amother

Wheat

Tue, May 12 2015, 11:58 pm

Op here. I did allergy blood test at 6 months of age. Results were all negative for allergies. I also tested for celiac disease. Results were inconclusive due to ds being deficient in iga