I think you should consider adding food into the spaghetti.

If you can familiarise him with new flavours and new textures that are inside of his comfort zone then it’s likely going to be less of an uphill battle than trying to get him to eat entirely different dishes.

First stop is switching to wholemeal pasta, since you are looking for fibre. I guess they call it whole wheat pasta there? If you slightly overcook it, the texture will be pretty close to pasta made with white flour so it shouldn’t be offensive to the kid.

The next stop is to get some red lentils or some lentil flour and incorporate that into the sauce. This will add some fibre and it’s nutritious.

Then try adding small bits of vegetables. Grate some carrot into the sauce when you’re frying down the onions. Do the same with zucchini. Little bits of red capsicum should also be okay but too but you can mince it in a food chopper if you really need to hide it.

Then start getting creative. Add frozen spinach, finely chopped cores of broccoli and cauliflower, that sort of thing.

Anything you cook with fresh vegetables and fruits is probably going to be a decent choice. Simple lentils with rice and a roasted veggie was a pretty easy one for a while. Other than that, we mostly made foods similar to what we normally eat, but with strong flavors dialed down a little.

For your spaghetti example, maybe try something like a lentil Bolognese to increase the fiber content:

https://minimalistbaker.com/vegan-bolognese-with-mushrooms-red-lentils/

Maybe this is a point where you might want to think about developing your cooking skills? Cooking for a young child might get a bit easier when you have confidence cooking for yourself!

We had a period where she’d eat nearly anything we put in front of her but there was definitely a shift to being more picky with foods around age 3 or so. Still working through how some foods are great “sometimes foods” and making sure we’re letting the little one have some part in weekly meal planning, but that’s just how things can be.

Have you tried veggie noodles? Might be able to make zucchini noodles with a high proportion of skin, or really any veg with a high amount of fiber in the skin, and mix that in with wheat and protein fortified noodles.

You could ask the kids pediatrician about fiber supplements that can be safely added to meals if that’s a resource you have access to. I’d definitely at least check with a doctor or nurse before using any kind of supplements, tho. You might end up with gnarly constipation or something.

I always wonder if kids who are “picky eaters” have food sensitivities they can’t explain.

There are chickpea/lentil pastas available that are much higher in fibre if that’s a specific concern.

It’s taken about a year for me to get those pancakes down. They are legitimately very difficult to make. And I consider myself a pretty good cook.

Carbs are something our oldest loves too. If they could eat bowtie pasta (butterflies) for every meal of every day they would be very happy, and probably extremely constipated.

Do you put some kind of sauce on the spaghetti? If so, try adding a tablespoon or two of flaxseed to the sauce. Doesn’t really change the flavor, but it might change the texture slightly. Or even try adding it directly to the noodles themselves.

Other some other of our carb/fiber combos are:

• PBJ - Warm some whole grain bread (we use Killer Dave’s Goodseed), butter it (this just helps the whole grain become softer), add peanut butter (we use Smucker’s natural peanut butter creamy), use thawed frozen raspberries for jelly, bananas optional
• Pita bread with tzatziki - Either make your own whole wheat pita/flatbread or just buy some (it’s not as hard to make flatbreads as you think, but it does take an afternoon), lightly fry in a pan over medium heat with a little olive oil (optional). The tzatziki is just sour cream /greek yogurt (you can make non-dairy sour cream by blending tofu and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, or buy some, we’ve used Tofutti Sour Cream before) and shredded cucumber, add salt, herbs and oil to taste. Have your kid add the dill.
• Blended sweet potatoes - Sweet potatoes are the GOAT food. Cook a whole sweet potato in either the oven or microwave. The skin should come right off when it’s done. Smash it in a bowl or blend it. Add oatmeal, quinoa, or flaxseed or some other grain of your choice if you want to thicken it. Cinnamon, fake vanilla, and/or all spice are good sweeteners without actually adding sugar.

I got some more but those are just off the top of my head. DM me if you need help.

We also have had success with a no-thank-you-bowl. We fill the plate with foods that our kid knows are “safe,” and usually add one food that’s more unfamiliar. They can put any food they want in the no-thank-you-bowl. It just goes in the fridge and comes out for the next meal. Cuts down on food waste too. They can of course take anything out of the bowl whenever they want. We started putting out just the no-thank-you-bowl and one safe food for snack time, and they’ll normally eat the safe food and attempt to eat something else from the bowl. Well eat stuff out of the bowl too periodically.

Does he eat sauce or just plain noodles?

You can hide mad vegetables in red sauce… beets, cabbage, mushrooms to name a few. Just whizz them in a food processor and toss them in. carrots and squash in Mac and cheese, you can blend them into the sauce.

Just going to share some sympathy. My son basically lived on milk and juice at that age and somehow continued to grow.

I am decidedly not a parent, but I do know a thing or two about fiber and nutrition. I’ve heard that you can blend veggies into sauces to get the nutrition while masking the taste/texture. So if you’re making spaghetti sauce, which I don’t think is particularly labor intensive, put some tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, etc. in there (perhaps panfry them first to soften them up though that is, of course, more work). You might also consider sugar, oils, etc. to make it go down smoother. You might dilute the nutritional benefit, but if it’s the difference between some fiber and no fiber then it’s still a win. In the same vein, smoothies with blended ice, fruit, and sugar have some nutritional benefit to give.

I don’t know the first thing about what kind of restrictions on diet being 2 years old gives you, but I know scaseyfitness (on all the different social medias) had some of the most simple, easy meal ideas for people who like to eat more than they like to cook. His focus is low calorie/high protein, but the neat part of cooking is you can substitute with what you have and what you need. That’s the sort of thing where you could substitute a custom (pre-prepped) veggie sauce to make sure you’re getting a complete macro profile and a bunch of vitamins & minerals. With some prep and planning, you can keep hands on cooking+cleaning time in the 15-20 minute range so you don’t have to change your lifestyle to be a better chef.

Piling on to the add things to red sauce. Carrots, carrot greens, parsley, onions, garlic, shallots, radishes, every leafy green you can find, etc.

You can use a cheese grater on lots of these ingredients to turn it into a fine mush and then boil it in the sauce for 30m and most of it will disappear.

The flavors will still come through, which is what creates the changes in taste buds. Over time, you can try making the stuff visible and see if the child will bite. Sometimes it’s the visual that turns them off.

Seriously, one ingredient at a time, one technique at a time, add sufficient heat, time, and salt, be patient.

Whole wheat pasta is just better than regular pasta, and it’s higher in fiber, so switch to that.

You can blend spinach into red sauce, it a variety of other veggies (carrots etc).

The green pasta sauce from this video might be up your alley if the kid will eat green things.