I don’t think I’ve ever met a child who doesn’t love fruit! If there is one, I’d love to hear about it! Children have an inborn affinity for sweet things (adults do too). Often, if your child loves fruit a lot, they will fill up on it and refuse their meals. Does this sound like your child? Today I’m going to share with you how to lovingly draw your child away from fruits and encourage them to eat their meals.

There are a couple of issues with a high fruit diet.

Firstly, some fruits are high GI, meaning they will spike your child’s blood sugars and lead to a drop in blood sugars later in the day. Often during episodes of low blood sugar, your child will crave more high GI fruits and sugars, and might even have a bit of a meltdown.

Secondly, lots of fruits throws your dietary ratios out the window. While I’m not a huge fan of tracking your child’s macros to the gram, I do believe it’s important to focus on a goal of high fat, lower carb ratios for their brain and body development. In general, children need a lot more calories than the average adult, and often need different ratios of food as compared to your own diet, so don’t compare your personal food intake to your children’s.

The final issue with a high fruit diet is that many fruits are high in mold spores. This might not be an issue for all children, but everyone has an individual tolerance as to the amount of spores they can deal with before they start to display health issues from mold exposure. It’s something to keep an eye on if your child’s eczema or behaviour is much worse after high amounts of fruit.

How to begin transitioning your child to a low carb diet

Offer full meals first, especially first thing in the morning.

It is much easier to get a high fat and high protein into your child before they’ve eaten anything else for the day. We offer eggs and bacon every morning to begin with. Sometimes leftover dinner meat too. If you’re vegan you could offer avocado on toast or coconut yoghurt with breakfast to get those good fats in.

Wean them off their fruits.

Begin the process by weaning them off their fruit. You don’t need to be 100% fruit free! You could try give a snack of coconut yoghurt (or regular yoghurt if you have dairy) with their fruit snack. I tend to chop the fruit up small and mix it in the yoghurt so they can’t have one without the other. Alternatively, you can use nut flours in baking to give them a little hit of fruit sweetness combined with fats and proteins from nuts.

Remove the high GI fruits.

The glycaemic index is how fast your body can break down a food into sugar. As a scale, broccoli would be slow, and chocolate cake would be fast. What many parents don’t realise is that in terms of GI, there are fruits that spike blood sugar just as quickly as chocolate cake would! It might be healthier in their type of nutrients, but it spikes blood sugar nonetheless. Removing these fruits (and other high GI carbs which will be a completely different blog post) can make all the difference! High GI fruits include watermelon, mango and pineapple. Low GI fruits include berries, apples and bananas.

Set some boundaries.

This can be the hardest as parents to do. Well it definitely is for me! Sometimes fruit is SO EASY and kids love it, so why wouldn’t you just give it?! When reducing fruit, plan ahead with some of the above suggestions. And set some boundaries with your children. The day I decided to reduce my son’s fruit consumption, we talked about the boundaries surrounding fruit, why we needed to eat a more varied diet, and that I was going to ensure he had a healthy diet. He knew it was coming which helped!

If your child has meltdowns when reducing fruit, you can then refer back to your conversation about the new boundaries, and stand by your choice. Often after 2-3 days, your child’s system will stabilise and you’ll find they stop asking for fruit all the time anyway.

If you’re concerned with your child’s diet and you feel it is affecting their health or behaviour, I’m here to help!

The Balance My Blood Sugars Guide

I created the blood sugar guide for adults hoping to balance their blood sugar the easy way (ie without changing their entire lifestyle). However, the principles and facts also relate to children. If you suspect your child may benefit from more stable blood sugars, you can apply the principles of this digital guide to your child’s food intake (and you can join in and stabilise your own blood sugar while you’re at it!).