HOW TO UNPICK YOUR PICKY EATER
Episode Title: Variety Over Volume: Why I’m Rethinking Baby-Led Weaning
Host: Christine Miroddi Yoder
Air Date: October 5, 2026
TRANSCRIPT
I did baby-led weaning with my son, and as a baby, he ate everything—all the fruits, all the vegetables, all the foods that made me think, “Wow, this is really working. I’ve got this. I am creating such a healthy eater. My child is never gonna be picky,” right?
And then, like clockwork, at around 18 months old, he started dropping things.
All of a sudden it was, “Oh, that’s funny. He didn’t finish that. Oh, he didn’t want that today. Oh, he threw that one. That’s weird.” And then all of a sudden, “That’s not funny. He doesn’t have any meats anymore. What happened to all the vegetables he used to eat?”
Does that sound familiar?
So when I had my daughter, baby-led weaning was not something that I really wanted to repeat.
I’m not sure if it really caused him to drop those foods. It really might not have. But I did want to do this experiment because I did have some suspicions that, because maybe his oral-motor skills weren’t so great—or as good as I thought they were at the time—maybe he actually had a lot of trouble with those foods. Maybe they didn’t feel good in his mouth, and that’s why they dropped.
So this time around, because my daughter also had tongue ties and her palate shape isn’t even the best, I really could have done a lot better of a job with that, and I do feel a little bit guilty. I probably should have done a little bit more therapy than I did. But I’m being super cautious about the size of the pieces and what I’m pushing on her.
So the new goal is that we’re not asking, “How much did she eat today?”
I now measure my success with a very different question: How many different foods, flavors, textures, and ingredients is her body learning to handle?
Because after everything I’ve learned about feeding and everything I’ve learned about the gut—and I’m learning so much more about the gut; it is so fascinating to me—I really no longer believe the biggest win is volume.
And I know that volume is really big for a lot of parents. In fact, I have a parent now where the whole family dynamic is very stressed around the thought of volume. Like, “This child needs to eat.” It’s actually becoming a source of stress in the family.
And I try to talk about positive experiences being the win. Ultimately, flexibility is the big win.
So welcome to How to Unpick Your Picky Eater, the podcast where we’re going to look beyond the behavior at the table to understand what is actually making eating hard and what we can do to help.
I am Christine Miroddi Yoder, pediatric feeding therapist and founder of Foodology Feeding Therapy. Today, I want to share how I’m approaching introducing food to my daughter, why I chose not to repeat baby-led weaning in the same way, and how learning about the gut microbiome completely changed the way I measure success at mealtimes.
Because at this point, I might be more excited that my daughter ate small amounts of six different ingredients than I am that she finished a whole bowl of a familiar food.
Not because volume never matters. Of course it does. Children need enough nutrition to grow and develop and feel well. But volume is really not the only thing we’re building during infancy.
We are building familiarity. We’re building sensory tolerance. We’re building oral-motor skills. We’re exposing the gut to new foods and new materials. We’re building flexibility, which is one of the biggest things children we treat for ARFID or pediatric feeding disorder are struggling to access.
They are not flexible. They are very rigid. Things have to look a certain way, taste a certain way, and feel a certain way. Okay? Flexibility is the key.
So today I want to explain why. Why? What are we doing all this for, right?
From what we have learned about the gut, there are so many benefits to having different foods enter that gut.
In fact, you really want to try to aim for 30 different things every day, and I know that sounds so wild. That’s a huge number. But honestly, if you think about it, there are a lot of foods that actually have 10 to 15 different ingredients in them, so you’re not as far off as you would think. But we do want to bring that focus back to: What are some of the ingredients?
[Editor’s note: The commonly cited American Gut Project finding compared adults who reported eating more than 30 different plant foods per week with adults eating 10 or fewer. It was not a recommendation to feed children 30 different foods per day. The discussion here is intended to encourage variety, not establish a rigid pediatric feeding target.]
Of course, we want them to be good, whole ingredients from real foods. I personally try to get different food groups, different spices, different sources of protein, and different textures as well, so that she’s getting variety on lots of different fronts.
She’s getting variety texture-wise, so things are going to taste and feel a little bit different. I might make eggs different ways on different days to get that texture in. I might even add different things to eggs, like some paprika, turmeric powder, and parsley, right? So she’s also getting some spices alongside the protein.
We add things like silken tofu to create puddings and add it into sauces. We use things like potato starch for resistant starch. That’s a really great thing for your gut as well. Or even just small amounts of sauerkraut juice—which you might be saying, “Ew. What? You don’t put that in tomato sauce. That’s crazy.”
But small amounts actually are not going to make a very big difference in terms of flavor, and they can introduce fermented foods. Adding fermented foods is one way to build more variety into what reaches the gut.
And another thing that you want to think about is that even if they’re just small bites, those bites still count.
My daughter takes these really small bites. I break the food up into really manageable pieces. She practices putting them on the side and doing her bites, so that hasn’t been an issue.
But I’m always watching her cues. Sometimes she’ll just open her mouth really wide. It’s not a gag. It’s more of an, “I do not know what to do with this,” or maybe it’s, “I don’t want this food in my mouth.”
So I help her and scoop it out, and then she’s usually fine after that. A lot of times, she’ll do more bites of it afterward.
I also tend to know when she’s finished eating. Sometimes it’s throwing a lot of the food on the floor. Sometimes it’s turning around. She might sign “all done” to me or just start waving around like she wants me to pick her up.
So it does not matter if she only took three bites of food at that sitting or if she ate a whole bowl of food. Whenever she’s telling me she’s done, I am respecting that.
A lot of times, babies are not just having solid foods, right? They are having formula. They are possibly drinking other things, like cow’s milk after 12 months. She is still getting breast milk whenever she wants. So I’m not really worried about calories or volume whatsoever.
Now, are there times when we would want to worry about volume? Yes. If a child has failure to thrive, or if they’re not getting enough calories from breast milk, formula, or other sources, obviously that is more cause for concern.
But more often than not, with a typically developing child who is learning to eat, I would say parents often overemphasize that push for volume: “You’ve gotta finish.”
I’ve had many families say, “He has to finish his bowl.”
It’s like, okay, but I want you to think: You have decided the volume in that bowl, not your child. It might be a little bit too much for them to finish. They might not need all of that. They might not want all of that.
So we’re really trying to respect their choice and their body, right?
Our job as a parent follows the division of responsibility. You might have heard that before. Parents decide what the food is and when it is served. The child decides whether they put it in their body and how much they are going to eat.
It’s a very simple division: Who does what job?
Learning to respect their decision to eat or not eat early on is really helpful long-term.
But again, just try to think about shifting that thought. If you’re somebody who is always thinking, “They’ve gotta finish. They’ve gotta eat. It’s really important,” I know it’s coming from love. I know it’s because you want them to be healthy, thrive, and not feel hungry.
But think more about variety. Think about different foods, different flavors, and different spices.
How can I take this ordinary dish—maybe it’s just banana or just avocado—and add a little bit more to it? Maybe I’ll add some flax seeds. Maybe I’ll add some cinnamon. Maybe I’ll add some lemon juice. Maybe I’ll add a little sauerkraut juice.
Or even some raw garlic. Raw garlic pressed in a garlic press with some lemon juice and avocado—you’ve got yourself a nice little guacamole-type snack. Really awesome and super healthy for the gut.
So maybe try shifting your perspective on feeding kids.
Instead of volume, variety.
Okay? I hope this helped some families, and we’ll see you in the next episode.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
