Picky Eater Tips
Finicky eaters may not get the nutritional needs they need to make sure they grow healthy and strong. IQed Smart NutritionTM can help by providing an easy way to serve an all natural whole food meal consisting of over 22 key natural vitamins and minerals, high-quality protein, soluble fiber, Omega 3's, and all the essential amino acids. Even though IQed is a blend of natural whey isolate protein together with Turmeric, Amalaki, Haritaki, Gymnema, Green Tea, Cocoa, Cinnamon, Cayenne Pepper, many children find it delicious. Visit our recipe page, or the IQedTM Pinterest board for more creative ideas!
Some Tips For Picky Eaters
- Consistency: Start with a small amount and gradually keep adding more and more IQed Smart NutritionTM Even if it takes a few days or weeks, keep trying.
- Change Up The Utensils: Sometimes seeing a spoonful of food can be scary to a child. Maybe try a medicine dropper, a syringe, or search for fun utensils with your child's favorite cartoon characters.
- Change Up The Packaging: Put IQedTMinto an empty canister of your child's favorite powdered drink. Based on a study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. cartoon branding affected children’s choice regardless of taste.
- Distraction: Some may say TV meals are not a good idea, but if your child is allowed to watch a favorite show or movie while eating, the distraction may be just what is needed to get the food in without a fuss.
- Don't force: Eliminate the power struggle. Respect your child's appetite or lack of one. Serve only a little bit, and let your child ask for more.
- Little helper: Ask your child to help you pick out healthy food at the store, help you prepare the meal, or set the table.
- Be A Role Model: If you eat a variety of healthy foods, your child is more likely to follow suit.
- Hidden nutrition: Purify vegetables to add to spaghetti sauce, also mix in IQed Smart NutritionTM to cooked foods once lukewarm, or serve your child an IQedTM cookie or other goodies.
- Shake It Up: A full nutritious meal in a shake is possible with IQedTM! There are so many fun and yummy shakes you can make with IQedTM For example, try a chocolate peanut butter cup smoothie. Mix chocolate IQedTM, a tablespoon of peanut butter, some chocolate almond milk and blend.
- Get Creative: Cut food into fun shapes, use cookie cutters, serve with a favorite sauce or dip, search kid-friendly Bento ideas.
- Be Patient: Your child may need repeated exposure to a new food before he or she takes the first bite. Encourage your child by talking about a food's color, shape, aroma, and texture — not whether it tastes good.
Tips From The Mom Of A Child With A Feeding Disorder
I want to start off about picky eating as it frustrates me to read how parents have stopped serving their child IQed because they can’t get it in to their child who is a picky eater. There are so many serving suggestions, and I want to share how I got IQed into Taine as I would say he is to the extreme of picky eaters as he has a feeding disorder.
If you are reading this and have trouble serving IQed to your child who is a picky eater: I know what you're going through. My son has tried both flavors of IQed, it was difficult to serve both, but we ended up with using the chocolate.
You know when your child doesn't eat something and people say to you not to worry that she will eat when she's hungry, well, that is not my son, he has never really liked eating, that includes sweet or savoury. He wasn't just a picky eater, he had a feeding disorder. He's quite happy not to eat, so every meal is a battle for us.
I started by adding a tip of a teaspoon of IQed into his yogurt and over a month I managed to get it up to 1 1/2 scoops. The same goes with his cereal in the morning which now consists of rice pops, almond milk, 1 tsp of coconut oil and 1 scoop of IQed. Milk in the evening is almond mild with 1/2 scoop.
I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you, but I'm doing what ever I can to get him to take it. Basically, he gets to choose a DVD to watch during meals (this is the only TV he is allowed to watch during the day) and as soon as he starts watching it I prepare his breakfast or his yogurt at lunch, so he doesn't see what I add. He has a little table he sits at and I just sit down and feed him. It's a battle from start to finish and can take up to an hour sometimes, but this is good for a boy who takes at least 45 min to eat an ice cream cone with 1 scoop of ice cream. If he stops eating I switch the tv off.
I figure I just have to do whatever I can and hopefully by the time he gets to school it won't be cool for his "mom to be feeding him" still. I don't know if anything of this will help you, but I would recommend just increasing it very slowly. We started with just that small amount but within months had him up to 3, and then 5 scoops a day. He's been on 5 scoops a day of the IQed formula for years now and very thankful for it.
Syringe Method
My son Graham prior to the syringe method refused everything. Mixing IQed in regular food or drink or making it into a recipe would be next to impossible to get 2-3 scoops in a day. Graham is a VERY picky eater, but then I found this "Giant squirter from outer space!". The syringe has been a game changer. Learn more how to use a syringe here
Graham in his Halloween costume which he never takes off. Looks like IQed gave him even more super powers than I boasted about!
Cartoon Branding Trick "The Secret"
Put IQed Smart NutritionTM into an empty canister of your child's favorite powdered drink. A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found cartoon branding affected children's choice regardless of taste.
Holly, the mom of Bodhi, a picky eater, used an old Nestle Quik container to get the full meal and vitamin replacement of IQed, an all natural food powder, containing casein free undenatured whey isolate protein synergistically blended with the Ayurvedic botanicals Turmeric, Amalaki, Haritaki, Gymnema, Green Tea, Guggul, Cocoa, Chia, Cinnamon, and Cayenne Pepper into Bodhi.
Use whatever old container or packaging you know your child would love!
This worked without him even knowing, and she helped the trick along by throwing in a few mini marshmallows.
(NOTE: It's not recommended to cook with IQed or add it to anything boiling as that may compromise the nutrients, but the way Holly did this as she explains below is fine)
”I give Bodhi his cup and spoon and let him spoon the IQed into the cup then add lukewarm water. I don’t know if you can see the IQed scooper on the side there in the photo? I let him scoop it all in, he hands the cup to me, I put it up to the tap to add the lukewarm water and I pour his ‘serving’ he’s done into scoop and measure pouring back what we don’t need or adding a bit more. Just using warm (not hot) water so he can drink right away.
When I made the ‘cocoa’ to put into the container, I poured the Nestle cocoa into a measuring cup and then added 3x the amount of IQed. So, for every full scoop into his cocoa, he’s getting 3/4 of a scoop of IQed. I played with some other mixes…but seems like the 3 to 1 (I really think it is the marshmallows!!) is good. I actually saw some little mini hot chocolate marshmallows at a bulk store which happens to be on the way to speech….and I think I will just grab some of those and see if straight IQed with marshmallows works going ahead.
Bodhi actually has an approximation for marshmallow he likes them so much ‘mamawewoowoo’…his ST was quite impressed with that one and vitamin ‘vvvvammmmummmm'”