Health Talk about Picky Eaters

Last week, I attended a short health talk organised by Abbott Pediasure to tackle the issue of picky eaters. Josiah is a real picky eater for me. Basically he hates all vegetables and fruits. Vegetables I understand, but fruits too, I thought most kids love sweet fruits but not dear Josiah. I had spent quite a lot supplementing his diet, from using vitamins, to fruit and vegetable powder, but he is usually quite particular of the taste. No matter how I hide them in his food, he just knows. Last month, Pediasure approached me to try out the all new PediaSure® Complete Liquid with Elite Formulation, Malaysia’s first ever ready-to-drink liquid supplement designed for picky eaters aged between 1- 10 years old. I know of most Formula Milk in powder form, never in liquid single serving liquid form, so I thought it would be pretty interesting to try. The only problem was, Josiah hates white milk. When he was weaned last time, I tried all kinds of brands of milk, and he rejects them all. In the end he accepted only chocolate flavoured milk, which was what he had been drinking since. So, I was given 3 weeks sample of Pediasure for Josiah to try and see how he adapts to it. Surprisingly, he accepted it and actually drank finish 2 bottles a day without much complaints. Only at the end of the sampling, did he start asking for his chocolate milk again.

So at the end of the sampling program, me and a few other bloggers attended a brunch with Dr. Shaalani Ramachandran, Medical Director of Abbott Nutrition and Pediatrician, Dr. Chin Wai Seong, who offered their medical insights in the matter. We get to hear their views of how to handle picky eating kids and also ask them any questions we wanted, which was a pretty rare occasion. Normally, parents would need to make appointments with their paed and well, pay for the advise as well.

“Many parents of picky eaters want to ensure their children receive excellent nutrition whether they are at home or away. PediaSure® Complete Liquid with Elite Formulation is scientifically crafted formulation that provides parents with complete reassurance for their picky eaters, anytime, anywhere.” Dr. Shaalani Ramachandran Medical Director at Abbott Nutrition

“It is important for parents to be aware of the repercussions of picky eating to a child’s health and the different ways that parents can address these issues to optimise their child’s physical and mental development.” Dr. Chin Wai Seong, Pediatrician

Josiah attended the event with me and was really busy doing some colouring. I really love the PR firm FleishmanHillard that organised this as they always know how to entertain our kids and will never overlook this area for parents with kids, very very important area for me. I won’t be able to attend most events if I could not bring my kids.

It was a great time to get to know more mum bloggers as well.

At the end we had lunch, after all, we were inside the Apartment at the Curve. Food was even provided for the kids, how nice. At the end of the day, I really learned quite a lot from Dr Chin especially, regarding how to feed our little ones using the right methods.
He was sharing from what he was trained in from IMFeD: ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS OF FEEDING DIFFICULTIES. IMFeD is a new, easy-to-use interactive diagnostic toolkit introduced by Abbott to help paediatricians accurately identify and manage feeding difficulties in young children. For sure most of my current methods are wrong, for eg, using iPad to distract during meal times. Well, I have a long way to go to reeducate the boys.

For the rest of the pics.

I received samples of Abbott PediaSure® Complete Liquid with Elite Formulation, along with an invitation to blog about our journey during the sampling period. The opinions above are my own