Just take one more bite.” It was — and is — classic strategy parents use to convince their children to eat a disliked food (namely, vegetables). Sometimes even as an adult, I still hear this phrase from my childhood ringing in my ears when I look at a plate of vegetables. Now that I’m a busy mom to a toddler, I would kill for someone to follow me around with a plate full of cooked, nutritious food. But as a kid, the constant pressure to take “just another bite” led to an unhealthy relationship with food that I would carry with me for the next 20+ years. I make better choices these days, and looking back I feel fortunate that I had the access to fresh fruits and vegetables unlike my immigrant parents did when they were growing up in Korea. It was likely the reason why mom felt stressed about my eating habits as a child. But because of the tension my family and I had around mealtime, I didn’t grow out of the picky “phase” with food until I lived on my own after college and learned to listen to my body. (Though I still won’t touch kimchi, sorry mom.)
As my one-year-old daughter ventured into the world of solids over the past year, I knew that I wanted to do things differently for her. And lucky for our generation, we have endless places to look when it comes to advise. Below, I outline a few of my favorite Instagram handles (all started by moms!) that have assisted me on my wild journey through toddler feeding. As we approach National Eating Disorder Week (February 22 – 28), it’s a helpful reminder that kids are impressionable and the way we teach them about learning how to eat healthy stays with them for years to come. Let’s dig in (pun, intended).
@kids.eat.in.color
Founder Jennifer Anderson is a registered dietician and has a masters of science in public health, international health, and human nutrition from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Plus, she is a mom of two young boys, so she has first-hand experience of all the feels that both parents and children go through when it comes to toddler meals. As you’d expect from her handle, her Instagram feed is full of beautiful rainbow foods that you can only find from a variety of fruits and vegetables, which are important to a baby/toddler diet for helping them absorb iron. Anderson focuses on associating each color with a benefit (e.g. strawberries contain polyphenols that are good for heart health) — a concept that Anderson believes kids can start understanding as early as two years old.
While many of her photos look hard to replicate in real life, she still keeps her advice down-to-earth. “It’s not our job to make sure they eat one tablespoon or five tablespoons [of something]. It’s not our job to define what they actually swallow. That’s their job. And when we give them that ability to listen to their body and we give them that space to decide how much to eat. That’s how they learn to listen to their body and their internal cues. The more we can protect that, the better off they’ll be in terms of eating the right amount of food for their body,” Anderson says in this podcast. My biggest takeaway from following Anderson: Keep offering your kids a variety of healthy foods — sometimes they’ll be picky, but sometimes they can surprise you.
@yummytoddlerfood
Amy Palanjian has spent over 15 years working in the media world as a recipe developer and food writer for publications like Better Homes and Gardens, AllRecipes, and ReadyMade. Her feed is centered around recipes that the whole family can enjoy together (she also runs the account @yummyfamilyfood) so that eating well and being conscious of nutrition becomes a family activity. Her advice helps parents find ways to cook healthily without feeling like they’re slaves in the kitchen, so her recipes are always quick, easy, and achievable no matter how busy your schedule. Carrot muffins, protein shakes, and pesto pizzas are just a few of her inspiring meals that I’ve personally tried (the muffins were a hit). Co-hosted with Virginia Sole-Smith, the author of The Eating Instinct, Palanjian also has a podcast called Comfort Food, which dives deeper into feeding topics like the impact of diet culture on our little ones, picky eating, and practical ways you can make family meals less stressful.
@kidfriendly.meals
Kidfriendly.meals was started by Min Jung Kwon, a Korean mama to a toddler son and registered dietician with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Emory University and a master’s in nutrition from Texas State University. Her toddler feeding approach is based on the concept of Baby Led Weaning (BLW), which is when you skip the purée and spoon-feeding stage and let your child have finger/table foods right away. This method is only safe for toddlers who are at least six months of age, able to sit up on their own and display other signs of readiness. Though pediatricians are still warming up to the benefits of BLW (it’s not the classic method taught in medical school), it’s gaining more and more traction: the “Baby Led Weaning for Beginners & Beyond” Facebook group has gained almost 360,000 members in the past three years. The benefits of BLW range from letting babies develop better coordination and chewing skills (there’s no airplane-style feeding here — you let your child figure out how to use their utensils), plus it gives them the chance to explore different textures and tastes that purées don’t allow for. The goal for many parents who choose this style is to let their babies eat what they eat, so they’re not constantly making separate meals or purées for them.
Self-feeding, as opposed to spoon-feeding, is said to be an important step in letting babies determine whether or not they’re done with their meal and regulate their intake by listening to their bodies. Kwon’s Instagram feed is full of recipes that support BLW feeding and includes advice on serving sizes (hint: your kid might eat a different amount every day), how to prevent choking, and more.
@newwaysnutrition
Dietitian Renae D’Andrea earned her masters’ degree in nutrition from Colorado State University and focuses on supporting families in every state of feeding their kids, from bottle/formula-feeding up to toddlerdom. Refreshingly, D’Andrea’s Instagram isn’t all about creating a perfect-looking, overly designed grid. Instead, each image is titled with the topic of that post so you can easily scroll through and find one that interests you the most (a true time-saver when you’re a busy mom and can’t deal with reading long captions).
Her feed is less about recipe ideas (though there are great ones in her free Starting Solids Guide) and more about answering parents’ burning questions to the challenging world of baby meals like what to look for in a high chair, when to have your baby start using utensils, and how to transition to cow’s milk. She’s also a proponent of Baby Led Weaning, so you’ll also find advice on how to cut finger foods, what to do when your baby can start using their pincer grasp, and more.
@zaynesplate
With her fifth baby due this summer, U.K.-based mom Simone Ward knows a thing or two about toddler mealtime. Her Instagram, which is named after her youngest babe (at least for now), Zayne, certainly has an aspirational quality to it (dinosaur and unicorn plates, anyone?), but this quote on her feed sums up her style the best: “Toddlers do not care if their meals are Pinterest-worthy or not!” It may be surprising coming from a food blogger, but “the reality is… don’t feel bad when you see perfect plates on your feed, or put pressure on yourself to do the same at mealtimes. This is not what is important when it comes to feeding kids. All that matters is that you get something balanced on the table and (try to) enjoy a meal together — and that your sanity remains intact in the process!” she says in this post. After going through stressful bouts of picky eating with my little one, I couldn’t agree more.
