90: Should You Force Kids to Eat?

Michael Kummer: If you're a parent, you probably. Not a drill. You know, you've prepared a nice meal for your family. You all sit down together to enjoy that meal, and then your kids or kids start poking around in the food and declare, I'm not hungry. I don't want to eat this. And how do you respond to that? And that's even more difficult, I guess, if you are invited somewhere and your kid says, you know, I, I don't wanna eat this.

I'm not hungry. You know, and there are a couple of ways on how you can respond to this. And I've heard several stories. We've responded in different ways. You can say, well, you're gonna, you know, clean your plate, you're eating what's on your plate, otherwise you're not gonna get up or you're not gonna get anything else, or, you know, just be okay with it.

You know, how do you respond to that? And I decided to record this episode and dive more into the nuances of why kids might not be. Hungry. What is really being hungry versus having cravings, and how do hunger hormones and fullness hormones play into all of that? Welcome to the Premier Shift Podcast. I.

And I decided to record this episode because I recently heard a debate on an Austrian radio station where a mom called in and said, how do, how do I handle such a situa situation where my kids doesn't want to eat what's on their plate because apparently they don't like it or they're not hungry? And most people who called in said, well, you have to force your kids to clean that plate to eat what's on their plate because it's good manners.

Nobody said. Well, maybe if your kid is truly not hungry, maybe your kid shouldn't be eating, because if you eat when you're not hungry, how do you know when you are full? You know? And so it, it was mind boggling to see. Only that one perspective where everyone was concerned about what's good manners. And I'm like good manners and meal times, all of those things that humans have invented that don't necessarily jive with what's going on in the body.

And so that's the topic of today's episode. And before we get into it, even if you have no kids, you know. Many of the things that I say really apply to adults as well. They apply to humans. And maybe first and foremost, let's talk about, you know, hunger and satiety. Because there are two hormones in the body that control when you are hungry that make you feel hungry and that make you feel full.

And those are ghrelin and leptin and. It's smart to listen to those signals from your body because as I said, if you eat when you are not hungry, how do you know when you are full? When it's when it's the right time to stop eating, you know? And so we should very much listen to those signals and only eat when we are hungry.

And from that perspective, I wanna point out, again, that applies to adults, but specifically to kids who are maybe a little bit more in tune with their body, that set meal times. Don't always make sense. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Those are things that we came up with as a culture, I wanna say, but that does not necessarily line up with when we are hungry, you know, when we are hungry, depends on a number of things.

Obviously a routine. Uh, if we always eat at a certain time of the day, then we typically get hungry around the time we get used to certain meal times. You know, I, I fully get that. I mean, we eat, you know, in the Kuer house or twice a day. We have a breakfast and we have a dinner. But when we have breakfast and when we have dinner, very often depends on.

When we are hungry and once when the kids are hungry. So don't be too stuck on certain meal times if you have dinner at a certain time because it's convenient for your schedule and your kid is not hungry, forcing them to eat anyway is probably a terrible idea. But what about, you know, and, and we have run into the same situation.

Of course, what if you know you have an activity then later on and you won't get home until? Late at which time it would not be advisable to have a large dinner. Right. We, we get that. We have the same situation here where we might have tennis practice at, you know, from five to six or from six to seven.

And we don't want to eat after. We don't want our kids to eat after because it's too close to bedtime. Well, you know, here is the thing.

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If the kid is truly zero hungry, it is okay. To not eat later either. You know, there are cases where, you know, we have an activity and if our kids are not hungry before the activity and we know we come back home late, we tell them, okay, look kids, you know, we're not gonna have a big meal.

After coming back from the activity because it would butt up too close to bedtime and then you're not gonna be able to sleep well. So there are a couple of options. You eat or don't eat, you skip dinner and that's perfectly fine. You know, we are not encouraging kids to fast or to abstain from food. You know, we very much try to let our kids eat whenever they're hungry, um, because they're growing.

They need a lot of nutrients and energy obviously. But it's also okay to occasionally skip a meal. Now, if that activity happens on a periodic basis, like if you have three times a week or whatever, a certain activity with that situation, maybe you wanna try to shift your mealtime altogether so that the kids are hungry before that activity.

But if it's a one-off kind of situation, we've had cases where, well, you know, we're not gonna have dinner. You're gonna be extra hungry tomorrow for breakfast, and that's fine. You know, nobody's gonna die by skipping a meal. If you are, then there is something wrong with your metabolic health, you know, so that's number one.

Uh, in addition to, you know, not having fixed meal times that might not line up with your kids physically needs. Right. It's also okay to dislike certain foods, you know, and, and obviously taste changes. My tastes have changed over the years. Kids taste change. What they like, what they liked yesterday, they might not like today, and that's perfectly fine.

You know what, we try to, uh, we, they usually know what's, what's for mealtime, so they can have a vote already upfront if they say, you know what? I don't really like this. Or let's say they, you know, don't like chicken meat, you know, then we'll offer them red meat, you know, or vice versa. The point is we give them the flexibility to swap out proteins, so from red meat to.

Chicken or to pork, to seafood, whatever. What we don't allow is to swapping out protein for for carbohydrates, you know? So if they say, well, I'm not really hungry for red meat, but I could eat a bag of Skittles, obviously that's a no-go. If you are truly hungry, then. You eat, you know, one of the, our preferred sources of proteins and, you know, fat, obviously we do also offer carbohydrates, but we don't substitute something that's essential, like protein and fat for something that is not essential carbohydrates, you know, so those are, you know, just some of the frameworks.

But within those frameworks, we allow kids to. Pick something that they like better maybe than something else. Now, not every meal is, you know, the best meal ever where we absolutely love the food because it's our favorite food. No, it is certainly not. But within reason, we allow them to, to change and swap out.

One thing that I've noticed kids very often do or like to do is to say, I'm not hungry. Then they go and eat something else. And what they're really trying to say is, I, I don't like this, but I'd rather have that. What we've been trying to teach our kids is to distinguish between true hunger and cravings.

Now, I wanna argue that our kids might have never experienced true hunger. I would argue that most adults, at least here in the United States, um, have never experienced true hunger. You feel what true hunger means. If you have abstained from food for several days, unless you have done that, you are not hungry.

You are craving, you know, and that's particularly noticeable in kids where, you know, they often say, you know, at the end of the meal, I'm, I'm full and I don't want to eat anymore. And then Kathy says, well, you know, I made, I'm at home at ice cream with raw milk and our own eggs. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm for that.

I'm still a little hungry. You are not hungry. You're just craving that and it's fine to like certain foods, maybe better than others, but try to teach your kids the difference between hunger and the craving and teach yourself that as well. So you know the difference. And the best way again, to find out is.

To not eat too fast for a couple of days. And I can tell you one thing, it doesn't really matter at this point what food is on your plate. You just wanna eat. You know? It doesn't matter what it is. You're not saying, oh, I, I'd really wanna have, you know, I, I'm only, I'm only hungry for this, but not for that.

No, you eat whatever is in front of you because you're truly hungry and you need. De fuel. And so same goes with the kids. Once they understand the difference between craving and hunger, it also makes the discussion a little bit easier. Now, one thing that we discourage here is constant grazing. You know, we have, even though I said set meal times might not always make sense, and we are flexible with the meal timing We.

Eat at certain distinct times when we are hungry and not in between because we are anxious. I mean, we all do this to certain degrees, but we try to avoid this as much as possible to constantly eat and to eat, like, you know, something five minutes before dinner time, you know, even if it's food. Okay. Let me maybe take one step back.

If we have planned for dinner at five and the kid says. I'm really hungry at three, you know, or at three o'clock the kid says, I'm, I'm really hungry. I need something. And, and the kid is willing to eat protein. Let's say, you know, a beef stick or something, then we are probably okay with that because, well, you know, they might be really, if you are willing to eat the protein only and the fat, then chances are they might be truly hungry.

And why not eat when you are hungry, even though waiting is probably not gonna hurt. But you know, before the kid gets cranky. You know, you eat that protein and then ma, the kid might eat less than when it's thinner time and that's fine. But what, what we don't do is we don't. Allow them unfettered access to quote unquote snacks.

Even though arguably the snacks we have it at home are not terrible, and they can typically have what we have at home. What we have in our pantry, we don't buy things that we don't want them to eat, but grazing constantly on food, never giving your body in your digestive system a break, never giving your blood glucose.

A chance to settle, especially if there are carbohydrates involved, is not a good thing. So we try to eat as few meals as possible. In the case of adults, those are typically two meals. In the case of kids, it might be a snack in between if it's a high protein, high fat snack and not something sugary or laden with carbohydrates, you know, so we do allow for that.

But generally speaking, the fewer foods. The fewer times you consume food throughout the day, the more rest your body gets. And that's generally. A good thing. One thing that I should maybe point out is, you know, if you have kids with eating disorders, you know, you might approach the whole situation slightly differently.

You know, you don't wanna necessarily discourage eating in a kid that already has eating disorders, but the same principle applies. Just because the kid has an eating disorder doesn't mean that I'm gonna feed that kid chunk food just for the sake of eating. You know, there's gotta be. A, a certain framework of what foods are acceptable and which ones are not.

But from a, going back to what I said initially, the theme of that episode here is making kids force. To eat what's on their plate because it's good manners or because it's time to eat now because we said so. Now it's lunchtime, now it's breakfast time. Now it's dinnertime. I don't think generally is a good idea.

Kids should learn and you are the teacher to listen to their buddies. Eat when you are hungry. Eat good food when you are hungry. Focus on protein and fat and use carbohydrates wisely and stay away from anything. Obviously that's processed chunk food, processed carbohydrates. They should have no place in your kid's diet whatsoever.

But within that framework, you know, allow kids to choose that type of protein that they prefer, the type of fat that they prefer. You know, maybe they like. Better. Better than GH or Tello, whatever the case might be. That's perfectly fine. Within that framework, there should be flexibility. There should be flexibility in terms of when we have dinner, when we eat, if they're truly not hungry, you know, don't force them to eat.

We have, especially with our daughter, she is, you know, I, I don't wanna say good at fasting because that's not really something we want to encourage in our kids, but she's very good at listening to her body saying that, you know what? I know you all have breakfast now. Um. I'm not hungry. I'm gonna eat later when I'm hungry.

And that's perfectly fine. And, and if that means her having breakfast then by herself a little bit later, that is fine. And, and she's really gotten to a point where she says, you know what? I love that you made ice cream mom, but I. I'm not hungry right now anymore. I'm gonna have it tomorrow. And that is just, you know, it, it makes us feel like there is at least one thing we right with our kids because there are certainly many things we did not.

Um, but teaching your kids to listen to their bodies is a thing, is an incredible tool because that sets them up for success later in life. So. You don't have to be told by a dietician what to eat and when to eat and how much to eat. You can listen to your body and eat intuitively, you know, eat what's good for you.

Eat what makes you feel good. Stay away from stuff that doesn't make you feel good. And only eat when you are hungry and stay away from food when you are not. And if that means having to skip a meal because you're maybe a little hungry later, but it's too close to bedtime, skip that meal. You're not gonna fall apart, you're not gonna die.

It's gonna be good for you. And for your kids. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up, but if you're watching this or listening to this on a platform with comments, let me know how you handle eating with kids. Do you make them eat what's on their plate? Do can, can they do whatever they want to or something in between?

Let me know. I'd love to hear from you or shoot me an email if you are listening to this on a platform without comments until the next episode. Next time on the Primal Shift Podcast, how do you really know if a food is good for you? We're not just talking science and evolution. We're talking how you feel.

Bloating, energy crashes, breakouts. Your body's trying to tell you something. Tune in and learn how to listen.