Air Date: July 28, 2026
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of How to Un-pick Your Picky Eater. I'm Christine, your host, and I am back. I was gone for a few weeks doing a lot of updating to the office and had to move a lot of things around. But... So as you can see, I'm in a new location today and I'm still... It's still a work in progress, but we're, like, 85% there.
Super excited about it. Yeah. I just... I wanted to get back to podcasting and sharing, sharing all of the things. So today, I have a very interesting... okay, preface this, I think it's a very interesting episode. But it is really a very long time in the making, and it's something we haven't exactly explored yet, 'cause I've never taken the time to analyze my own data in super depth.
We track a lot of different variables over a pretty, a pretty wide range of different areas of people's lives from birth to however old they are at the present moment. And that is a lot of information to sort through. We have a lot of... I have a lot of different pieces of interest that I personally wanted to track.
And I think the data that I have really deserve to be analyzed for a few reasons, so I wanted to even check myself. I kept seeing the same kind of thing show up but I wanted to know, is there really a pattern here that, like- Is supported by numbers, or am I just making things up in my head, it's always important to test your own theories in a way. So right now, I have a very small group that I have started to analyze. Not a big research study. It can't prove one thing causes another thing, but it did show me several important little pieces, and some things actually really did surprise me truly.
For many of these kids, food was not the only hard thing going on, and that's why I don't like the phrase picky because picky tells us what we see. It doesn't tell us why it's happening. I know you're gonna be saying like, "But that's like what your podcast is called," and I know, but you also have to think, like a, a business owner, a marketer.
How would people find what you do if, they call it something else? So parents call what they're seeing picky eating, and that is actually why I use the word because that's the type of thing that they're typing in when they're looking for help, right? So let me tell you about the first thing I noticed, and this one actually surprised me the most even though when I saw it, it like it did make sense.
I was like, "Oh yeah, okay, obviously." But I had never actually had a number to put to it before, and this is what surprised me the most. Most of the kids that we have were boys. So 71% of the group was boys actually. So it doesn't necessarily mean that boys are more picky than girls. Girls can struggle with food too.
They definitely can, and a lot. But boys, I don't know the exact reason, but I do have a theory because we already know that boys are often diagnosed more with things like ADHD, autism, sensory differences, behavior and regulation struggles, and all of those things can actually make eating harder too.
So that overlap kind of makes sense. 'Cause think about what a meal is asking a child to do. They have to stop playing, come to the table, sit still, maybe talk to people, smell food, look at food, touch it. They're hearing people chewing. Maybe they're worrying someone's gonna ask them to try something, and they have to put it in their mouth, and then there's a whole bunch of different things that start happening in the body when that, occurs.
So for some kids, that is just, it's a lot. So it's not always that they don't want to eat. Sometimes their brain and their body are just working super hard. So I was thinking that it might be because of that. One of the other pieces of information that we got was, like as I was saying about those diagnoses 50% of the kids came to us already diagnosed with one of those things that we talked about.
So whether it be a neurological condition or behavioral diagnosis we actually... They came to us already diagnosed with that, so very interesting. And like we said, those, those areas overlap greatly with why it might be challenging for food. So I think there is definitely something to that. I'd be super, super curious if other feeding practices find that their statistics, they have mostly boys as well.
All right. The next clue, how their story started. I also found this very interesting. And this is an area, although again, right before I started this little project, I hadn't necessarily written down the number of kids that were or weren't born by C-section. But we did have it in our intake forms. So when I actually compiled all that data, 45% of kids were born by C-section.
Now, although that is under half, in the United States, one out of every three babies is born by C-section. So in my group, the number was a little bit higher than average. And as you may or may not know, that number is... That number I believe it's the number 32%, I believe, is the national average of C-section rates.
That is actually significantly higher than pretty much every other country in the world. There are no higher rates for C-section than there are in the United States. So that is very interesting to me. So we do have higher than average in our feeding clinic born by C-section. So I just wanna be super clear.
Being born by C-section does not cause picky eating. Many children born by C-section eat perfectly fine. And no parent should hear this and feel worried or blaming themself. But birth is part of a child's story, right? So we're going to take it into consideration when we're looking at all different variables about what could contribute to things like picky eating.
A C-section can happen because mom or baby needed extra help. There are, hard pregnancies, early births, antibiotics, NICU time, sometimes trouble feeding at the start, reflux, early separation. All of these things may matter, or they may not. But I do think that we should start, not only asking questions about what happens when they're three and onward and they refuse chicken nuggets.
Their feeding story starts much earlier than that And, one of the things about C-sections that we know, as a fact is that it does alter the microbiome in area. So that is the gut. That's the bacteria inside of the gut. So we know that C-section babies have a bit of a different gut profile than babies born vaginally, and that can alter that altered microbiome.
Especially because, there could be also antibiotics administered as a part of that process. So there's a few reasons why. The vaginal walls usually do something called a seeding as the child comes down through the canal, and it just, covers baby in this, all different sorts of bacteria from mom.
But sometimes babies, C-section babies don't get that, so their microbiomes are not quite as diverse starting out. So just really interesting to note. Maybe in the future, this research that I'm doing now might lead to, proactive some- doing something different with the microbiome to hopefully, prevent, later issues.
I don't know. I don't know what the, the culmination of all of this research will be. I'm just putting together some puzzle pieces and, throwing the question out there even to others. Are you noticing the same patterns? I think it would be interesting to do a study of many different feeding clinics to see if there are some more trends that follow what I have found as well.
The other really big pattern was, of course, the body really matters. This stood out to me a lot. Okay, most of our kids had some kind of mouth, tongue, jaw, or airway concern in their history. That's 64%. Now, that does not mean every child needs a tongue-tie release. It does not mean every picker- picky eater has a mouth problem.
But here's what I want you to understand. Eating is a body job, right? The body has to do some sort of work to eat. A child has to be able to breathe through their nose because their mouth is busy chewing, moving food around, swallowing. You can't breathe and swallow at the time, at the same time through your mouth.
Okay? So if your mouth gets very tired, if food requires a lot of effort to chew and break down, or they don't feel safe with food in their mouth, they might avoid it. And even though they can't explain that, they might just say, "I don't like it," or, "It's gross," or, "I'm not hungry." But sometimes it's their body telling us, "This is just too hard."
I do think that's an interesting statistic, and we have talked about that. Obviously, that's a trend I've observed, but the data is pretty significant. That's a, a high percentage. 64% of kids have some sort of concern. Now, let's see what else. We also found that constipation affected a good amount of kids.
About 35% of our kids had constipation issues, and also mouth breathing or sleep issues were around 30%. Now think about this. A kid who is super backed up hasn't gone to the bathroom in over a day some- sometimes I've heard several days. They can feel full, uncomfortable, not hungry. They might take a few bites and say that they're good.
They might not even tell you that they're hungry. Now, if kids are super tired or they're breathing through their mouth constantly, that means eating is gonna be a little bit more challenging, okay? So they're gonna have harder time trying new things. So those variables absolutely are things...
That's why we have them in our intake forms, of course. But these are things you might wanna think about if you hadn't yet. They might not be the whole reason that your child is struggling with food, but they do matter, and we... It just, again, keeps reinforcing. We can't just look at the plate and what they are and aren't eating.
We have to look at the child sitting at the plate, too, and what they can and can't do. Now, this next piece of information definitely caught my attention, and it's something I have been researching myself for a, I f- I feel like a good year or so. Okay? This is called GABA. GABA is short for a super long name, gamma-aminobutyric acid.
You don't have to remember the name. Here's what you need to know. GABA is a helper chemical. It's found in the brain. It's also found in the gut. So your brain has lots and lots of messages coming in all day long. Some messages are saying things like, "Pay attention." Some things say, "Move out of the way."
Some say, "That's really loud." Some say, "That food smells weird." Some say, "Remember when you gagged last time." GABA is one of those chemicals that helps the brain slow down some of those messages. People often call GABA the calm chemical, but it's partly true. I think there's a better way to explain it than that, but GABA helps your brain sort through all the noise.
It helps your brain decide what matters right now and what can stay in the background. So think of it like a volume knob. If every sound, smell, feeling, worry is turned all the way up, it's gonna be really hard to focus on anything. So for a child who struggles with food, the smell might feel huge to them.
The texture might feel huge. The sound of somebody chewing might feel huge. The memory of gagging might feel huge. The worry that Mom might ask them to take a bite might be a really overwhelming feeling, even if that isn't going to happen, even if they just think that's something that's gonna happen.
So GABA is part of the system that helps the brain turn down some of that background noise. In the brain, GABA is made from another brain chemical called glutamate. So you can think of glutamate as a go message. GABA is like a slow down, sort this out- Now, gut bacteria can also help make GABA. That doesn't mean GABA made in the gut goes straight to the brain and can make your child feel calm.
It's a little bit more complicated, but the brain and the gut absolutely 100% do talk to each other in many different ways. They can send messages through nerves, the immune system, chemicals made by different bacteria that are sitting in the gut. Scientists are really truly still figuring out how it all works together But we do have some data now that shows that some of our kids had either very low GABA or none.
They were not making any in their gut at all. It doesn't tell us how much GABA is in their brain or in the rest of their body. It does not provide, or it doesn't prove really that, low GABA causes picky eating, and doesn't, i- it just doesn't, we can't prove anything just yet.
But I do think that this is a clue that is absolutely worth watching because it does fit the profile of a lot of our kids very well, right? Our, a lot of our kids are super anxious about food. A lot of them are sensory sensitive, meaning some senses are very heightened. So for example, a food that doesn't really have a big smell to you might to them smell like it is like smoke filling the room, like it is just like inescapable.
And it's just a very big feeling to them, right? I'm trying to figure out why some of our kids do have like such big reactions to food or their environment when other kids aren't, and I'm wondering if this GABA is a piece of that puzzle. So we will continue to be tracking that and seeing, e- especially if it overlaps with a lot of our kids that are very sensory.
So seeing if there's a connection between that. Now there was not, one specific answer for every child, right? Not every child had a tummy trouble. Not every child had a mouth issue. Not every child had a sleep issue, and not every child had low GABA, and that's why we cannot use a cookie cutter approach for especially our most severe picky eaters.
Because for one child, food might be hard because their tummy hurts, but for another it could be hard because chewing takes a lot of work. But I do think that what I want you to take from this, that if you are seeing some of these things, I want you to be curious, asking do they get constipated?
When is the last time they went to the bathroom? Are they mentioning that they feel full? Do they snore? Are they mouth breathing?" Are they really paying attention to certain sensory things like smells or sounds? Maybe, maybe those things that happened when they were a baby actually still are impacting.
Is their body trying to tell us something? Y- my my opinion always is that kids need help learning to feel safe with food and, they... A lot of times these kids need help with their body skills, showing them that their sensory system doesn't have to be fighting them all the time, things don't have to feel so overwhelming.
That's what we try to do with our kids, that's very foundational. 'Cause we really don't think kids are trying to make meals hard, and we don't think parents you know are failing, they are just not getting all the information, I think. So their eating, I think, is giving us clues, and that's what we look for.
We look at all of the history, and we look for these clues and we now are looking at this data. And hopefully in the future, this data maybe will help me better predict a treatment plan or a course of therapy, or things that may or may work better for one child versus another with specific sort of flags.
Or this might be, a future checklist for pediatricians that help them better identify when kids need help with food versus when maybe it's not something to worry about, which I know can be hard for It's hard for professionals to know, everything about every condition.
I'm just hopeful that some of this will be of use someday, but I hope you found this interesting. I hope if there are any other feeding therapists out there listening, that you are also gonna be looking at your own data, and I'd love for you to share with me if you found some overlap in the things that I found as well.
I would be super interested to know that. And I'm gonna try to be a little bit more regular with the podcast episodes now that my office is done and has been built. I'm just tucking things away. And I have a super- cool thing I'm super excited to share with you guys. Coming up, it is a free, it is a free course on how to introduce food to your child, and it's a very step-by-step can't fail, can't mess it up type of a thing.
I'm very excited to share it with everybody. But I'm still working hard on it, so hopefully it will be out soon and on my website. Yeah, I think those are all the updates I have. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our team or, on Instagram or... i'm not, I don't check Instagram all the time.
It's not my favorite platform, but you can always email us, hello@foodologyfeeding.com, or visit our website, foodologyfeedingtherapy.com. We hope to see you soon. Bye guys. Have a good week
