How Does Getting Messy and Playing With Food Help Feeding Development and Reduce Picky Eating?
You were likely taught the importance of mealtime manners as a child. Don’t play with your food, don’t chew with your mouth open, don’t make a mess… while mealtime manners definitely have a time and a place, when learning to eat, some of these rules are better left by the wayside. Getting messy and playing with food is an important step in learning to eat. Children often go through a period of food neophobia, or fear of new foods. Allowing children to play with and get messy with new foods, helps them to become more familiar and less afraid of them, and can help reduce picky eating. I know it can be daunting to think of the extra mess that might be involved with cleaning up, but staying calm and allowing some mess can go a long way with helping your child learn to eat new foods. The mess will be worth it.
Let them get messy!
Here are the reasons children are more likely to eat foods after being allowed to play and get messy with them:
Children are able to learn the sensory properties of foods through getting messy.
It may be surprising to some that eating involves all of the body’s senses, and not just taste.
When children touch the food, they are learning the sensory properties of the food. As adults, we have built a large inventory of experiences with foods. Just by looking at a food, we may already have an idea of how it’s going to feel, how it might sound when we chew it, how much pressure will be needed to bite it, and even how it might smell. Babies and children on the other hand, don’t yet have this experience, so by touching the food they are starting to learn and figure out how different foods are going to feel in their mouth. This includes how much pressure will be needed to chew it, and if it feels similar to or very different from any foods they already eat. This helps give them the information they need to figure out how to eat the food, and be comfortable enough to try eating it.
A good rule of thumb is that if they’re not comfortable with the food on their hands, they likely won’t be comfortable with it near or in their mouth.
Try not to wipe up your children’s hands and face during mealtimes either (unless it’s about to get in their eyes). By keeping the mess on their hands and face, they are getting important sensory information about the food, and not to mention that some children do not like the sensation of being wiped up, and can start to associate the negative feeling of being wiped off with eating.
This study found that children were more likely to try new foods they participated in sensory play with, as well as to try new foods they had not yet participated in sensory play with. This shows sensory play with food can help provide a desensitization to foods in general, and not just the foods they interact with, which means an increased willingness to try new foods overall.
Playing with and getting messy with food can help children feel more comfortable eating it.
2. Play with food provides the exposure opportunities many children need in order to work up to tasting the food.
Through touching and playing with the food, they are more likely to get smells, and even possibly some first tastes of the food (how about using that asparagus spear as a pretend toothbrush!). While it may not be immediate that they start to eat the food, and since many children need 10+ tastes (even up to 20-30+) on different occasions before starting to accept and eat a new food, these exposures add up over time to help your child work towards adding it to their accepted food repertoire.
3. Being allowed to get messy and play with food creates a low pressure environment.
Reduced stress and reduced pressure typically increases children’s food intake and willingness to try new foods. When mealtime is already a potentially stressful time for some kids with new foods and smells, by adding on the additional pressures of not getting messy, or getting in trouble for playing with their food, we aren’t setting up an environment to encourage eating new foods. In turn, a low pressure, low stress environment means children are actually more likely to eat. Research has found that lower vegetable intake in children has been associated with pressure from parents to eat. So let your children play and get messy to encourage them to eat, rather than pressuring them to eat (whether verbally telling them to eat, or coercing through bribes), or creating a high stress environment where they are not allowed to make a mess.
4. Play is intrinsically motivating, and helps maintain the natural intrinsic motivation to eat.
When children play with food they are intrinsically motivated to interact with it, and even to try tasting it. Intrinsic motivation means you are doing something because of the enjoyment or satisfaction you get from it, rather than external reasons, such as a reward or punishment. Play in itself is fun and provides enjoyment. When children play with food, it creates opportunities to have fun, enjoyable interactions with a food they might normally have only negative or stressful experiences with (e.g. not liking the smell, being afraid of how it looks, being told to eat it). Intrinsic motivation allows children to feel a sense of pride in themselves and a sense of achievement, as well as motivates them to keep learning about it.
In typical development, feeding is intrinsically motivating, such as through natural hunger/full cycles, enjoying the taste of foods, natural curiosity, and enjoying the social aspects surrounding food (e.g. holidays, social gatherings). When we add in extrinsic motivators for eating, such as pressure (e.g. “Just try it”), and bribes (e.g. “Three more bites or you can’t have dessert”), we may end up interrupting their natural hunger/full signals, as well as undermining their natural curiosity and enjoyment of foods (e.g. children may internalize thoughts such as, “If I need a reward to do this it must be bad”). When children enjoy the context in which they tasted the new foods, they are more likely to continue trying it, which will lead to increased volume of consumption.
Cooking with your child helps create fun, low pressure, interaction opportunities with food.
How can you create an environment to support messy play with food?
Show your child fun ways to touch or play with the foods. Click here for some fun ideas.
Place a mat under your child’s chair to relieve the stress of food getting on the floor. There are great washable mats, or disposable and biodegradable options.
Provide finger foods at meals so your children have opportunities to touch foods, rather than just using utensils.
Allow babies to start off meals by self-feeding, and use co-feeding as needed (letting baby self-feed some bites with the parent hand feeding additional bites).
Let your children cook with you. These step stools provide a great way to bring your toddler up to the counter level.
Offer different types of textures for your child to touch (based on your child’s current skill and developmental level), including purees (e.g. mashed potatoes), soft foods (e.g. cooked vegetables), crunchy foods (e.g. celery), juicy foods (e.g. strawberries), chewy foods (e.g. chicken), crumbly foods (e.g. muffins), etc.
Eat dinner outside when you can, so you are less worried about the mess.
Stay calm when your child makes a mess, and don’t punish them. You can set some general boundaries, such as with throwing (e.g. “We can throw our food into this bowl/the trash can, but we don’t throw it on the floor, it’s okay if it falls by accident”).
Give verbal praise for all interactions with food (e.g. “Nice work holding your green bean”), but not over the top, and only if your child responds well to verbal praise (some children might not like the spotlight on them like this).
Change into “play clothes,” eating smocks, or forget the shirt, so you are less worried about messing up nice clothing.
Try not to wipe up your child’s hands and face during mealtimes (unless it’s about to get in their eyes). It’s important for children to learn to tolerate new textures on their hands, and many children do not like the sensation of being wiped up, and can start to associate the negative feeling of being wiped off with eating. You can provide a napkin/wet towel for your child and encourage them to wipe them on their own if needed.
Tiny messes can lead to tiny gains, and over time, tiny gains add up to big changes. Those tiny messes will be worth it.
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This website and information on this blog post is provided for educational purposes only. It is not meant as medical advice, intended to replace a speech-language or feeding assessment, therapy from a speech-language pathologist, or serve as medical or nutritional care for a child. It is recommended that you discuss any concerns or questions you might have with your Speech-Language Pathologist, pediatrician, and medical team, and develop an individualized team plan specifically for your child.