If your child eats unhealthy food, gets too excited about snack times, or overdoes it a parties, you may have used controlling feeding practices or food restriction. This can have lasting effects on food preferences and the food relationship.

In my work as a pediatric dietitian, I’ve witnessed parents controlling food, interfering with eating, and harming the developing relationship with food…unintentionally. Especially if there’s a child with a larger body in the family, the desire to control their diet may be strong. 

In this article, you’ll learn about:

• Food restriction and why some foods are “forbidden”
• How and why children enjoy forbidden foods
• Why it’s important to recognize restrictive feeding practices and work to correct them

What is Food Restriction?

Food restriction is a feeding practice that is part of the feeding style called controlling feeding. It’s defined as a parent or caregiver who tightly controls or eliminates palatable foods like sweets and treats.

I have encountered families who believe they need to control, tightly limit, or restrict the food their child eats, especially if it’s off-limits food, fast food, or unhealthy stuff, or their child has poor eating habits.

Parents may label foods like candy or chips as ‘forbidden foods’ and make them scarce or unavailable, or create food rules around them.

If their child is a big eater or carries extra weight, then food restriction is more likely. 

Diet culture leads parents to believe that food is the problem and that controlling food and their child’s eating is the path to a healthier eating, a healthy weight, or body.

Restricting or controlling food is generally done with good intentions, but it may cause more problems for the child and the family members down the road, potentially disturbing a healthy relationship with food. 

How are Parents Controlling Food?

No doubt, feeding kids is one of the greatest responsibilities you have. Planning your child’s diet, introducing them to new foods, and establishing good eating habits are part of being a good food parent. But feeding your child is also repetitive, challenging, and a chore.  

Additionally, our society’s obsession with being fit and trim increasingly affects our children.

As a parent, you’re faced with confusing and conflicting messages about best practices around proper feeding, healthful foods, and optimal levels of nutrition.  

You may respond to this evolving standard of perfect nutrition with the only thing you can think of doing: tightly controlling the types of food your child eats, or the amounts. 

Eventually, your parental feeding practices take a turn for the worse and you become the food police – controlling food portions, your child’s eating, and more. 

Are You Restricting Your Child’s Food?
Sometimes parents don’t recognize this tendency in themselves.
Here are some signs that you’re restricting or controlling your child’s food intake:

• You make sure you avoid certain food items, like candy, chips, or ice cream.
• You control how much your child eats.
• You limit exposure to indulgent and unhealthy foods.
• You only serve nutritious foods.
• You limit portion sizes.
• You pre-portion your child’s dinner plate or offer low-calorie “snack packs” 
• You purchase diet, low-calorie, or fat-free foods in order to control the amount of calories, sugar, or fat your child eats
• You limit second helpings at the dinner table, or even forbid certain foods from entering the home or the family diet.

Which isn’t a bad thing, except that much of this ends up in a power struggle over food.

The main thing is that you’re not relaxed about junk food, sweets, or other indulgent foods. In fact, you worry about them. A lot.

What Restricting Food Really Does to Kids 

Using food restriction regularly can cause children to focus more on, or become “obsessed” with, the foods that are limited or forbidden. 

When these foods become available, children may overeat them. Especially when children are away from the watchful eyes of mom and dad.

When a child’s access to certain foods is tightly controlled, they may develop feelings of deprivation, or scarcity.

They may feel left out or deprived when they don’t have the freedom to choose what or how much they want (or need) to eat.

Like adults, kids want what they can’t or don’t have – its human nature. Take away the candy, and kids can’t stop thinking about it.

However, unlike adults, kids have less control over their biological drive to eat. They also have immature executive functioning skills, which make it harder to delay gratification or regulate their behavior.

The research comes true: Restrictive feeding practices may promote overeating, unhealthy eating habits, and loss of intuitive eating.

Most interestingly, studies not only link food restriction to weight gain. They also link a parent’s perception of their child’s weight to restrictive feeding. 

In other words, if you think your child’s body shape or size is larger, or you perceive they’re overeating or gaining weight, you are more likely to be more controlling — and restrictive. 

Yes, you’re more apt to become a food cop.

Is Your Child a Victim of Food Restriction?

Kids learn how to cope when their parents are too controlling with food. The detrimental effect are many-fold when a child experiences controlling food practices. For one, your child may “overeat on the sly,” or secret eat, trying to gain access to the foods that are limited. They may have poor self-control when treat foods, energy-dense foods, or forbidden foods are available, like at a party. They seem overly excited by sweets and treats, or too focused on them. Ultimately, food restriction may undermine your child’s ability to regulate their eating and can cause problems with healthy dietary behaviors.

How to Tame Your Inner Food Cop

Restrictive feeding is a counter-productive feeding practice. It may lead to more eating dysfunction like overeating, binge eating, sneak eating, and more. Remember, if your child perceives they are restricted, they are. 

Try the following tips to calm your inner food cop and minimize controlling food and eating:

1. Provide an abundant table of healthy food choices for meal times. You can also include sweets, too. It’s all about the balance. When there is abundance at the table, your child will feel like there is plenty to eat and can have their fill.
2. Use all the food groups to make a balanced meal that is both satisfying to the eye and to the tummy.
3. Recognize the emotional aspect of eating. Feeling hungry and being able to satisfy that hunger is more than a full belly–it’s emotional fullness, too. Feeling emotionally and physically full goes a long way to stop dysfunctional eating and the responses to restriction that are common in children. 
4. Be a diplomatic feeder so that your child experiences regular family meals using a predictable feeding schedule, food boundaries that aren’t too controlling or restrictive, and that which allows reasonable choice.
5. Remember the Division of Responsibility: you decide what (meal), when(time) and where (location). Your child decides whether and how much they will eat.
6. Don’t be afraid to legitimize forbidden foods. Bring them to the table as part of a meal. Plan them into your child’s daily eating to neutralize them.

If you’ve been engaging with this feeding style and you’re seeing a negative impact, you can seek more help from a registered dietitian.

This post was originally published in 2013; updated October 2024.