Let’s Talk About Nutrition with Children: Hunger Cues…

Helping children recognize when they are

hungry and full can be a way we promote

physical wellness. Some people grew up with the

clean plate club. The clean plate club is the idea

that children should clean their plate at every meal.

Studies show that encouraging children to clean his or her plate influences

eating behaviors away from physical wellness. Sadly, the clean plate club is a

controlled feeding practice and can negatively affect food regulation skills as

children age.

A new Cornell research study showed that the average child only eats about

60% of what they serve themselves. Adults eat an average of 90% of their food

when they serve themselves. Unlike adults, children are still learning much about

what foods they like and how much it will take to fill them up. It's natural for them

to make mistakes and take food they don't like or over serve themselves. What's

less natural is for them to be forced to eat their mistakes.

Obviously, the clean plate club isn't always about getting children to eat

more. Sometimes it's about getting them to eat healthier. For example, parents

and caregivers may insist that children eat fruits and vegetables before other

items or reward children with dessert for eating more healthy foods.

Unfortunately, this strategy makes children less likely intrinsically to prefer

healthy foods while making sweets even more desirable. Children end up losing

sight of their internal signals of hunger and fullness.

By the time they're adults the "should's" of eating rule over their body's own

wisdom and they don't even know what being full means.

Consider letting children have seconds of a certain food if they are hungry, instead

of making them eat everything on their plate first. If children indicate they are full,

let them be done.

As you are having conversations about foods and nutrition, you can also talk

about what it feels like to be hungry or full. There's lots of good news,

researchers at the University of Minnesota found that young adults who used

hunger and fullness to guide eating not only have lower body mass index than

those who didn't, they also had lower instances of disordered eating.