Having a child who turns their nose up at a variety of foods, which often includes fruit and vegetables, can be a huge stress for parents trying to give their child a balanced diet.
How can you tell whether it's a fussy eating phase or a restricted eating problem? And if it persists how and where do you seek help?
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We get some advice from Massey University nutrition lecturer Dr Cathryn Conlon and Massey University speech and language clinician Emily Jones, who runs the ACTIVEating Clinic which treats children with restrictive eating.
Fussy eating is something most parents have to face at some point, Conlon says.
"It's a really common developmental stage about one in three children are probably going to face some kind of food restriction or food refusal at some point, so there isn't really one characteristic that defines a fussy eater or a restrictive eater."
She is more concerned about the variety of food a child eats.
"For a normal fussy eater, as long as they are having a variety of foods so they get all the nutrients they require you can be assured."
But children who restrict a number of foods, or a whole food group such as vegetables and fruit or dairy, are more of a cause for concern, she says.
Jones says another red flag is when a child has less than 20 base foods in their diet.
"If they were restricting whole food groups or food textures or having trouble with hard-to-chew foods ... or had more immature eating skills."
Conlon says the age range at which children tend to have the most problems is between 18 months and 3 years.
A problem persisting beyond that is possibly a sign that a child is having difficulty.
By grouping foods into carbs, vegetables, proteins, etc parents can see how many base foods a child is or isn't eating, they say.
"Sometimes what you'll see is they have a lot of those carb foods; so breads and crackers and things like that, but are missing proteins and missing fruit and veg," Jones says.
Conlon says vegetables are the most common hard-to-eat food, along with meat if it's not been processed.
But she doesn't like the idea of grating veges and hiding them in food.
"Are we actually teaching children to eat vegetables if we do that?"
Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
Tips to get children eating a variety of foods
Children need to learn to eat:
"When do we actually sit down and teach children how to eat? With harder to eat food that child is going to want to know something about that food, is safe to eat? Does taste like something they are familiar with?"
Explain to a child how to eat a certain food. Tell them they've got to get it onto their back teeth and start chewing it.
Jones advises getting a child to taste a food while it's being prepared.
"With hard-to-eat foods, our tongue needs to lateralise and move side to side. Some children just aren't doing that."
Get them used to variety:
Jones uses a technique called 'food chaining' to avoid the '50 Shades of Beige' syndrome.
"They do go for those more beige and white foods. Processed foods can be a bridge to the foods I want them to get to.
"We go from something they'll eat, like chicken nuggets, and I will slowly progress them to get to a harder meat texture."
The current recommendation is that children have three meals a day and two snacks.
Snacking is a chance to introduce new foods, Jones says.
"Try not to use processed snacks. Snacking time is a good time to encourage fruits and vegetables.
"I sometimes use freeze-dried fruit or use mandolins and do really thin slices easier than a big chunk."
Encouraging a child to handle food can be a positive gateway, too, Conlon says.
"If they can accept something with their hands, that's a great way to get them to accept it into their mouth."
Jones suggests pairing food - something they love with something they don't like so much.
"They love crackers so often I'll try and put new foods on that safe food. Kids love crunchy coatings, especially on meats."
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