Professor Emilie Flores, a renowned nutritionist and research specialist in Nutritional Epidemiology and Child Nutrition, and professor of nutrition, College of Public Health, University of Philippines, Manila, describes  picky eating as “an aspect of sensory food aversion exhibited by toddlers up to 84 months.

“The picky eaters are children who exhibit strong sensory  and experiential aversive sensitivity behaviour to specific type of food, food taste, aroma, temperature, visual forms, shape and colour,” she asserts.

Emile adds that picky eating is most common when young children are in transitional period to self feeding which is at about two years old. “At birth, infants are univores, with a well developed sensitivity to sweetness. As the child grows older certain transition from univores to multiple food sources sensitivity exposure occurs as various food tastes, texture or aroma are introduce.

These learnt skills of eating multiple foods based on parental knowledge, attitude, practices and behaviour about foods and nutrient functions allows the child to have post-ingestion or experiential concept of what is edible or not, palatable and acceptable for individualized self-regulation of internal cues for hunger and satiety cues.

She explains that implications of picky eating  include nutritional imbalance that may lead to under-nutrition or over-nutrition and anaemia. It could also affect mental and physical developmental performance.

“You need to worry about picky eating when  food aversion or selectivity or food fussiness leads to nutritional imbalance, either deficits or excess that results to growth and development faltering, anemia, altered mental and physical developmental scores and development of nutrition-related diseases.

“My advice to new parents on how to deal with picky eaters includes learning the functional role of foods and nutrients; development of healthy eating habits prior to, during and after pregnancy; exertion of parental role modeling on healthy food choices, preferences and healthy eating habits.”

Emile adds that managing picky eating should include provision of comprehensive nutrition counselling on aspects of optimal growth, development and self-regulation,  as well as promotion of   information and constructive advice to parents or caregivers on calorie-nutrient dense foods for infants and the role of socio-cultural environment in feeding the child .

“There is need to emphasise on provision of fortified nutrition supplement to fill-in the gaps of the cereal-based foods or carbohydrate-rich foods being provided to Nigerian children  considering the nutritional composition of the food sources; that they may have low levels of amino acids and at-risk nutrients.