How “Clean Your Plate” Causes Picky Eating

Many parents teach their children to eat all the food given to them with the common phrase: “Finish your plate.” Some of the time, not wasting food is the sole reason for this mindset, but a lot of the time, social norms play a role. Many cultures across the world, especially those from East Asia and Eastern Europe, encourage parents to feed their children more than the children want to eat. These traditions often originate intergenerationally from a period of time when the country didn’t have enough food to go around, and people needed to eat every last bit of food they could get. This cultural precedent causes parents to feed their children more food than necessary, even though food is generally abundant in the U.S., and is of much higher nutritional value than it was in the past.

Studies show that around 85 percent of parents with children in kindergarten around the world tried to get their children to eat more, and 83 percent of children ate more as a result. This high number emphasizes the potentially wide-reaching effects of overfeeding. 

Overfeeding also has an impact on long-term eating habits, including picky eating. According to the Mayo Clinic, children need to be offered a new food 12 to 17 times before they are interested in trying it. Forcing children to try new foods instead of allowing natural curiosity causes them to rely more on parents for food choices and stick to what they know in the future. This comes with many long-term effects into adulthood, the most pronounced of which is picky eating. Furthermore, children’s appetites fluctuate based on how much they are growing, so parents should not overfeed their children even if their child's eating pattern changes.

Moreover, pressure on children from their parents to “clean the plate” has significant effects on the quantity of food consumed by adults. A study from ScienceDirect discusses why pressuring children to eat is not only detrimental to their health but also counterproductive to the parents’ goal. Not only does this pressure make the child more likely to reject the food over time, but it also leads to them eating less overall in the absence of pressure. Therefore, if a parent forces their child to overeat, they will have to constantly monitor the child to eat a healthy amount of food. This pressure may also cause the child to gravitate toward unhealthy, sugary snacks that they are not forced to eat, instead of nutritionally rich foods. In the cases where parents feed children unhealthy foods, the consequences come with even less pressure. 

One specific, well-known issue created by overfeeding is the widespread dislike of vegetables among children in the U.S. An article from the National Institute of Health examined whether bitterness, the taste present in vegetables, is naturally repulsive to humans or is only considered that way by society. Surprisingly, the results show that bitterness is a somewhat naturally repulsive taste because sugar is a drug to the body that is absent in bitterness, and the body rejects bitterness to avoid consuming poison. However, the study shows that people’s preference for sweet flavors decreases significantly as they grow older, while the rejection of bitterness stays somewhat constant. This indicates that some factors cause the disproportionate difference in dislike of bitterness between children and adults, which could be a combination of children’s continuous consumption of sugar and societal factors. 

Overconsumption of food as a child, especially by the will of parents, can cause many detriments later in life, including picky eating, an unbalanced diet, and a dislike of healthy foods such as vegetables. To prevent this, parents should continuously offer new foods and allow children to explore their tastes with their curiosity instead of forcing consumption. Forcing children to clean their plates or rewarding a clean plate with dessert both cause negative eating habits. Whether the pressure comes from positive or negative reinforcement, parents should abstain and allow children to eat without punishment or reward. Parents can also take their children to the grocery store and allow them to explore their curiosity even further, in the process of teaching the children about which foods are healthy or unhealthy. All of these measures can significantly improve the eating habits of children in adulthood and prevent picky eating. 

If older children or teenagers have the problem of picky eating resulting from any of these reasons, including cultural, they can fix it by allowing their body to balance itself and trying new foods. Growing children have very sporadic eating habits, so they should understand if they eat less at some times and more at others. This sporadicism can occur in a span of months, days, or even an uneven eating schedule within a day. Of course, trying new foods is necessary to get rid of picky eating. The most crucial thing to know is that adolescents, just like children, may need multiple exposures to new foods before they enjoy them. If they try a bit—enough to taste it—and don’t like the food, they do not need to force it down. This will only increase the body’s dislike of that food and will not improve the situation. Instead, trying the same food over time in small quantities and doing so with multiple different foods can significantly reduce the adverse effects of picky eating incurred as a child.