Anti-bread Child?

I think that is great and not a problem at all. Nobody needs to eat bread. Even "healthy" bread isn't really healthy.

I wish I hated bread!!!

He's fine without any bread. You don't get much from bread unless it's 100% whole wheat and not processed. So no worries. He's better off.

Bread's basically just flour and water, so he's not missing out on anything nutritionally. It just makes you full leaving less room for more nutritious foods.
Good for him, I wish I had his "problem" :-(

Be glad. He doesn't need anything in that bread. Nothing. If it is iron enriched (about the only redeeming quality you are likely to find in store bought sliced bread) he can get that elsewhere.. like his cereal or milk or multi-vitamin.

Bread (processed starch, high glycemic index) is converted to sugar in the body. He REALLY doesn't need it. Most people would be better off if they DIDN'T eat ANY.

Celebrate this unique quality that he naturally embraces. :)

He's not getting much nutrition from the bread at all, so I'm not sure why you're fighting it. If you want to give him fiber, there are other ways to do that. Right now you are just wasting money and food. A lot of kids don't mix tastes and textures so I'd get one of those divided plastic containers and put cheese cubes in one compartment, and fill the others with bits of turkey, grapes, melon, cherry tomatoes, pepperoni slices (or whatever else he's picking off the pizza), green pepper strips, pasta, etc. If he eats other forms of fiber (in vegetables, fruits, and other products like rice or quinoa), there's nothing magic in bread.

Everyone needs to supplement, because it's not just the bread that is lacking in nutrients. So is the cheese, the vegetables, and the fruit. But a standard multivitamin doesn't have enough and what's in it isn't absorbable at a high enough rate to make a difference. Most pediatricians with any nutrition training (especially current or recent) consider standard grocery store vitamins to be "expensive urine" because so much is eliminated. Any vitamin product that contains a dozen or two dozen isolated vitamins is barely usable (we need some 70 nutrients at the same time for each one to function properly). Moreover, because they aren't fully balanced with enough of an array of minerals and trace elements and everything else, there is a possibility of overdoes and toxicity (doesn't it seem odd to have a product that says "keep out of reach of children"???).

I work in food science and there's really nothing in the stores or vitamin shops that we recommend. Kids who aren't getting what they need (and adults too - most everyone needs it) really need a more comprehensive formula. So if you're going to rely on diet alone, I'd go for a lot more variety with as many local and seasonal foods as you can find, and let him have the food in a form he can agree to eat. You can work on other ways to get new foods and tastes into him so he's not a picky eater forever, but that's more easily done at the family dinner table than in a school lunch.

And by the way, the reason commercially available breads are "enriched" is that a huge percentage of the nutrients have been stripped out of them, and then a handful of vitamins put back in. So they use white flour which is stripped of the wheat germ and bran, and then they throw a little of this vitamin or that back in to confuse you. You can make a variety of pancakes or french toast or muffins with other forms of grain if you feel strongly about it, using whole grain flour with wheat germ and flax seed and oatmeal and other add-ins. He never has to have another piece of bread for the rest of his life if he doesn't like it.

I really don't think that is a big problem.

I have never been a bread person and I am healthy. My mom used to worry about me because I would eat the insides of a sandwich and only pizza toppings! I still don't care for sandwiches and pizza.

If you are concerned about nutrients, just ask your pedi but I don't think bread is that good for you anyway.

Nope, you don't need to force him to eat bread. Wrap his sandwich innards in lettuce. Offer him corn tortilla wraps. He just doesn't like wheat. Perhaps his body knows something you don't. Wheat is not all that healthy, and it's in entirely too much of our food.

This might be a phase. Both my siblings did this for a while when they were little and they outgrew it by age 10.
I wouldn't force my kid to eat anything, as long as they had a pretty good balance. i.e., pizza toppings aren't the most healthy - lots of fat and salt - but does he also eat veggies, fruits, other whole grains like pasta or rice?
Vitamins are a good idea, but best to just make sure there's a good variety of healthy food in general.

He can get his whole grains in other ways-- oatmeal and oatmeal flour pancakes, quinoa has many uses, brown rice, whole grain pastas and tortillas (watch for hidden hydrogenated oils in some of those!) and healthy low sugar whole grain breakfast cereals.

I have a son that doesn't like a lot of bread. I have taken to using just one slice of bread but putting a full sandwich worth of gubbins inside. We get tortillas or small flat breads or the Hawaiian Kings bread rolls and filling them. He leaves behind some of the crust when eating pizza too.
I have another son that used to like to take his sandwich apart. I would just put all the sandwich makings on a plate and put a piece of bread on the side.
You might want to consider trying another bread. My kids much prefer a bread with a rich flavor over sliced white bread. None of us like that.
He's not missing a lot by not eating bread really. Make sure he gets fiber from other things, like fruit and veggies. I know white bread gets fortified with all sorts of extra vitamins because it's otherwise a mostly empty food. Just up his choices of other foods to make sure he gets what he's not getting from the fortified bread.

I also think it's great that he skips the bread.

I just wanted to share a story that I just heard that his reminded me of...my boss's nephew hated bread and wouldn't eat sandwiches, ever. His mom used to get all worked up over the fact that in high school, he ate popcorn or tortilla chips (corn) for lunch every day. This boy had issues...scrawny, bad skin, bad attitude, poor grades. Well...fast forward a few years and the kid found out as a young man that he had celiac disease and his was pretty bad. After eliminating gluten and embarking on a health journey to heal his gut, he grew a few more inches, gained weight, his skin cleared up, his brain fog cleared, he went to college, and is a happy, positive, successful, outgoing health nut of a young man.

Your son probably doesn't have a food allergy or anything like that, but I figured I'd share that story because it's a good reminder that sometimes, our bodies know more than our brains do and even kids can tell on a gut level (literally) what they need.

Anyway if I were you, I'd just skip the bread entirely and give him what he actually wants to eat (the good stuff inside!). There is no nutrition in bread, at all. Any synthetic crappy vitamins and nutrients put back into the bread after it's been stripped, bleached and processed out of the grain can be found elsewhere.

Nope - he's fine. He isn't missing anything by not getting the bread.

I don't think that avoiding bread is all that harmful in principle. However, most commercially available breads are enriched. So he might be missing out on things like niacin. No harm calling the nurses line at your ped's office to see if there are otehr foods you should add in light of his bread aversion.

Best,
F. B.

My son who is 7 will not eat bread, pasta, cheese, any type of meat besides chicken, no sauce, no butter and gags at the thought of eating any type of veggie. I do give him vitamins and pedia sure. He loves fruit, chicken, rice, peanut butter, oatmeal, yogurt, milk. That is pretty much what he lives on. He has been this way since he started solids. There is nothing anyone can do to make him eat anything else. It drives me crazy but he is healthy and growing (although skinny, but still gaining slowly). I would not push the bread thing. there are plenty of other ways to get carbs.

why would you force him to eat bread? how many essential nutrients do bread and pizza dough actually have?
food battles are simply not worth it. especially over something like this.
khairete
S.

Bread is not the bread it used to be...Wheat is now genetically altered.
Many of the breads contain high fructose corn syrup - which is not healthy.

Kids go through food jags. I am sure he will like it one day !

I. personally. do not like bread unless it's made w/ high quality ingredients and warm.

For carbs, I eat quinoa, Tinkyada brown rice pasta, rice, etc...

I have one that lives on bread stuff and one that hates anything to do with bread.

I just don't serve that kiddo meals with a lot of bread. If we get pizza he gets spaghetti or something else.

If we ate sandwiches I'd make sure to fix him something else. I hate sandwiches so that's not a problem for me.

Does he eat other complex carbs? Potatoes? Rice? Pasta? If so, then he isn't missing anything by not eating bread.