Autonomy, control and sweetcorn: why we shouldn’t push children to eat

I eat pretty much everything. I love cooking and I love food. Of course, there are a few things I am not keen on, like sundried tomatoes and blackcurrants, which I wish I liked but somehow they taste too intense and ‘red’ (I’m also a synesthete; my brain weirdly attaches colours to tastes, feelings, days of the week, etc., but that’s another story…).

There is one food, though, which I absolutely cannot handle, and that is tinned sweetcorn (if you’re in the US, I think this may be canned corn/maize – please set me straight in the comments!). I like it on the cob with butter and pepper, I even like it sliced off the cob, but out of a tin? Can’t do it. I’m not just being a food-snob here – there is something in the flavour of tinned sweetcorn that makes me feel physically sick, and I know why this is.

When I was eight years old, I had a big pile of sweetcorn on my plate and I didn’t want to eat it. It was sitting in a pool of water from the tin and it smelt funny. My teacher said I couldn’t leave the dining hall until I ate it and she stood over me for two long hours until, gagging and sobbing, I ate every last kernel.

When I came across a study last week, about the impact of ‘forced consumption’, the battle of the sweetcorn came flooding back. The study, aptly titled: “You Will Eat All of That!”: A retrospective analysis of forced consumption episodes¹, looked at how participants’ being forced to eat certain foods as children (they were now college students) had affected them.

The findings were dramatic: almost three quarters of students who had been forced to eat a certain food by an adult when they were a child, did not eat that food as a young adult. The foods were not even always disliked when the students were forced to eat them; sometimes they were just new or unfamiliar.

The students rated how being forced to eat made them feel, and the findings revealed high levels of helplessness and lack of control. It was suggested that the interpersonal conflict (between the child and authority figure) increased the negative feelings experienced by the child IF the child ‘lost’ and ate the food. Conversely, if the child refused to eat the food and ‘won’, this may contribute to future rejections because  “every time that they reject the food, they re-assert their control”.²

What can we learn from this study? Well, I’m sure most of my readers already know how damaging forcing a child to eat can be, but there is a more subtle message about autonomy, here. If we respect children and see them as people who have a right to make their own choices about whether or not they eat the food we provide, we are giving them a sense of control which can lower anxiety and reduce their need to refuse food.

Paradoxically, over-riding children’s autonomy and pushing them to eat – even if it feels like gentle encouragement rather than the type of forced consumption described in the study –  can make them seek the only kind of control they can get in that situation and they refuse to eat certain foods or cling to a narrow range of foods.³  If they are very limited eaters, they are probably already rejecting foods as a coping mechanism, for example, to avoid feeling anxious or to avoid difficult sensory experiences. If we add to this by making them feel they need to refuse foods to stay in control, their eating difficulties will be compounded.

If we give children control in the first place, by trusting them to make their own eating decisions from within the context of the food we serve, they won’t need to feel in control by rejecting foods.

In short, not pushing children to eat is supportive of their eating.

 

Ten reasons never to push children to eat

 

1. It increases children’s need to reject foods in order to have a sense of control
2. It introduces conflict which has been shown to make eating worse
3. It reduces children’s ability to self-regulate (eat in response to their body’s cues)
4. It erodes trust between the adult and the child
5. If the adult feels they need to encourage eating, they may then experience negative emotions when children don’t comply, which the child will pick up on
6. It can make children dread meals if they worry they will be expected to eat or try foods
7. It makes it harder to enjoy the social side of meals if the emphasis is on what the child is eating
8. It makes it harder to foster the positive and relaxed atmosphere that is essential to building eating confidence
9. Mealtime stress or pre-meal worry can suppress appetite, making eating worse
10. If we can build trust by respecting children’s eating autonomy, they will begin to learn to trust themselves and build their eating skills and confidence

---

¹ Batsell Jr, W. R., Brown, A. S., Ansfield, M. E., & Paschall, G. Y. (2002). “You will eat all of that!”: A retrospective analysis of forced consumption episodes. Appetite, 38(3), 211-219.

² Batsell et al., 2002, p. 217

³ Please note: If you are worried your child is not healthy because of their eating, seek advice from a medical professional such as a dietitian or their GP/Health Visitor (UK) / their pediatrician (US)