How to Help Kids with Sensory Food Aversions

By age two, nearly 50% of kids exhibit selective eating habits (1). While most naturally outgrow this phase, some struggle with sensory food aversions (SFA) that go beyond typical picky eating.

Understanding the root cause of your little one’s selective eating can help you provide the support they need for long-term nutrition success. 

In this article, we’ll break down how to identify sensory food aversions and research-backed strategies to help them try new foods.

Picky Eating vs Sensory Food Aversions

Picky eating can be broadly defined as having a decreased variety of foods. This is a developmentally normal phase for 2-4-year-olds because of their naturally lower appetites and experimentation with autonomy (2).

Got a picky eater? Here are 10 Strategies to Tackle Picky Eating from a Registered Dietitian.

While picky eating stems from typical developmental patterns, sensory food aversions are often linked to underlying anxiety, sensory sensitivities, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),or avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) (3). This results in physical discomfort or psychological distress when eating certain foods.

Although picky eating and sensory food aversions can look similar, it’s important to identify the signs of SFA to help address any underlying issues.

Common signs of sensory food aversions include (1, 3):

• Avoids food based on sensory characteristics (color, texture, temperature)

• Nutritional deficiencies

• Difficulty participating in mealtimes

• Aggression or withdrawal at mealtimes

• Low interest in foods and low endurance to chew foods

• Avoids any interaction (touching, playing, smelling) with “non-preferred” foods

How to Help Kids with Sensory Food Aversions Try New Foods

Start with Preferred Foods

Preferred foods are foods that your kid happily accepts and eats without hesitation. Making a list of these preferred foods can make meal planning easier and help you identify the sensory patterns that your kiddo struggles with. 

Also, serving at least one preferred food at every meal has been shown to reduce mealtime stress for kids with sensory food aversions (1).

Because anxiety is often an underlying element of SFA, consistently offering foods your kid enjoys can make meals feel less overwhelming.

Identify Sensory Struggles

Every kid with sensory food aversion is different! Some may struggle with chewing harder, crunchier foods, while others avoid softer foods because they feel uncomfortable in their mouths.

It’s critical to identify which sensory elements your kiddo specifically struggles to accept - hot, cold, crunchy, soft, smelly, sour, bitter, visually textured, etc.

This can help you offer the right kinds of foods that challenge your kid just enough, without overwhelming them. 

Prebiotic fiber supplements such as Growing Up Prebiotics is texture-free, helping even the pickiest of eaters get more fiber throughout the day in an easy way. Every serving provides 3g of fiber in a tasteless and textureless powder - jutst mix in water or their favorite beverage.

Make Small Changes to Preferred Foods

Although preferred foods should be present at every meal, the key is to make small, subtle changes that gently challenge your kid’s preferences. 

Examples of this include:

• Changing the container that the food is offered (taking snacks out of packaging, offering foods on a different plate)

• Cutting the food differently

• Offering the food at a slightly different temperature

• Using a different brand

• Serving with a dipping sauce

• Sprinkling a light seasoning on the food

While these changes can be difficult, they help your kid become accustomed to the natural variety of less-processed foods. 

Encourage Sensory Interaction & Repeated Exposures

Especially for kids with sensory sensitivities, tasting a food the first time they interact with it is unlikely. They often need to get comfortable with new foods by looking, touching, and smelling.

Kids with SFA are more likely to accept and eat a new food if they have repeated experiences touching, smelling, and looking at it with no expectation of eating it (1).

Once they taste a new food, they may need to try it up to 15 times before accepting it as a regular part of their diet (2).

Keep Mealtime Low Pressure

Using pressure or force with kids who have SFA has been linked to lower overall calorie intake, more food rejection, and more negative comments about food from the kid (1). 

Additionally, using food as prizes or punishments like “you can have a cookie once you finish all your broccoli” does not help kids overcome their sensory references (3). 

Instead, providing repeated exposure to food with little pressure to eat it, encouraging food play, giving non-food-based praise, and modeling healthy eating behaviors can improve intake and expand food preferences (1). 

Here are some example of mealtime prompts that encourage food exploration and intake without pressure:

• “My cauliflower feels crunchy, what does yours feel like?”

• “What sound does your pasta make when you chew it?”

• “Let’s pretend to brush our teeth with our peppers”

• “Let’s pretend to be bunny rabbits and take little bunny bites from our carrots”

Summary

Although complex, sensory food aversions are a common reason kids struggle with eating a variety of foods. This can result from underlying psychological or oral-motor issues and often leads to nutritional deficiencies and poor growth.

However, making strategic changes to their preferred foods, offering repeated exposures, and reducing meal time pressure can give your kiddo the support they need to expand their diet.