Satter's book provides a wonderful foundation for feeding your child over a lifetime. While it is true that you can cherry pick bits out of it which on the face value of individual sound bites might make no sense, when taken as a whole, it is a REALLY great book to read as a parent or child care provider. For instance, she says somewhere in the book, that if your young child wants butter, let them eat it to their hearts content. You might say, "Say what?" Here's the thing, if you do let your kid eat the butter to their heart's content what do you think will happen? I can almost guarantee you that at some point (before the kid is anywhere near developing coronary heart disease), the kid will mentally say, "enough of that" and move on to something else. (Just be prepared that it might take a few days, but it will happen.) Then the butter is no longer some "special" food worthy of being desired among all else. (Think about the last time you truly gorged on something. How do you feel about that food now? I can barely look at shrimp cocktail after one particular incident years ago.) Same goes with dessert or anything else. BUT here's the key things to remember, Ms. Satter is advocating for parents to provide consistent HIGHLY NUTRITIOUS meals that are PALATABLE at consistent and reliable times. When you are serving the OCCASIONAL ice cream, cookies, cake (whatever), you are also serving an ARRAY of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats, etc. which you allow your child to CHOOSE from -- everything becomes ordinary and welcomed. [BTW: I do agree with one reviewer who said that our culture serves dessert last, so probably that should be held until after the main meal is over. I would just treat it as another course, like appetizers get served first. This isn't to make it special or not, just keep some order to it all, as that's how others in our culture do it. And frankly you want a well adapted, not weird kid.] Junkier foods are held to a smaller proportion of the offering. And you are not offering extremely BLAND tasting foods -- unless that's just how your family likes everything. The non-junk should taste as good (or perhaps better) than the junk. This means, for some, learn some food procurement and cooking techniques to enhance your cooking, if necessary. Vegetables/fruits should be fresh, ripe and attractive. Seasonings, including some oils and butter possibly, should be incorporated in your food. If you don't know how to do these things, try youtube, there are lots of videos out there. She just is stressing that the adult caregiver is reliable one for providing good food at certain times, but you should never FORCE the child to eat it. Otherwise, you set up unhealthy power struggles. Sitting at the table together and eating healthy meals you can all eat together will actually help everyone. Often when food is sitting in front of you, you will eventually eat it, even when you might otherwise not have an interest. Human food acceptance increases with exposure to foods. Sometimes, a person has to be exposed to a food 9-11 times before they start to develop any time acceptance for it -- even adults. So, offering a wide variety of foods (presented in portioned sizes that your child can take) will eventually lead to your child (and perhaps you) to eating more variety and hopefully healthier foods. When she wrote this book, the science was not out to support her theories. This was written after she had spent many years as a parent and dietitian. She went back to school to learn psychology and continued helping people with family eating dynamics. So in many respects she was ahead of the "science" -- as studies are often short-term with a limited amount of participants. She had lived this stuff, lectured and taught it for MANY years BEFORE she wrote the book. So, it seems that science only caught up with her afterwards. Part of me wanted to give this book four stars due to the fact that if you have never tried this method, have no nutrition background or don't have access to her live (or possibly her old videos), on the first reading it may be difficult to understand how or why this works. However, let the words marinate with you (LOL), then read it again if you like. Try it out slowly with an open mind. You might find your pickiest eater will turn around and you and the whole family (or organization) will benefit. Fearless Feeding by Jill Castle is an excellent companion read to this book. It picks up where Ellyn Satter leaves off for older kids. It also goes into some detail about diet that Satter did not delve into with food specifics.
(Note: I did not like the Kindle edition, which I purchased in 2014, as there are no real page numbers and scrolling was awkward. This made it difficult to discuss this book with others. I read it as a parent and for a class.)
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Mari PS
Every first time parent should read this.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2017