Smelling Healthy Foods Makes Your Child Like Them Better

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

The smell of food is part of its flavor. If you want to teach your child to like the taste of healthy food, you will need to give her lots of "lessons" in the taste of healthy food.

One way to do this is to let her smell food. Smelling food is safe -- she doesn't actually have to TRY it! It also gets her accustomed to the taste of healthy foods. If your child sniffs guavas a few times, she may find them less strange when she actually gives them a taste.

Children often need a dozen or more "lessons" in a food before they come to like it. Smelling is an easy and painless lesson.

Sniffing Healthy Food Makes Processed Food Seem Boring

Processed foods have very little flavor.  They may taste salty, sweet, or fatty, but they don't have the fresh, strong flavors of real food. 

If you teach your child to like the tastes of fresh food, he will shun the nasty, insipid tastes of processed foods.  The artificial flavors, stale flour, and procesing chemicals will taste repulsive to him. 

The most straightforward way to teach your child to like healthy flavors is to give your child home-made foods made with fresh ingredients.  However, you can also help your child learn this lesson by letting him smell fresh ingredients.

Sniffing at the Supermarket

When you're at the supermarket, let your little tyke smell the food that you're putting in the grocery cart.  You can pick up a basket of strawberries and smell them yourself, and then say "Ummm, tasty strawberries!"  Then give them to your child to smell.

Sniffing Makes Food Fun

There are a few other advantages to letting your child smell food.  First, it makes food into a fun, playful toy.  Your mom may have told you not to play with your food, but playing with food is a wonderful way for children to overcome their misgivings about it. 

Sniffing Makes Children Pay Attention to Food and Its Tastes

Playing the smell game also teaches your child to pay attention to his senses.  Many people wolf down their meals without even really paying attention to them.  Your goal is to create a young foodie out of your child -- he should love healthy, fresh, wonderful-tasting food, and dislike the bland, artificial flavors of processed food.  Teaching him to pay attention to his senses of smell and taste will help him along in this goal.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Hiding Healthy Food in Your Kid's Dishes: How to Do It, How Not to Do It

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

There are several popular books, like The Sneaky Chef, which tell you how to hide healthy foods in your child's favorite dishes. Desperate parents resort to doing this because they can't get their children to eat healthy foods like vegetables. If their child won't eat anything but chocolate chip cookies and bologna, then at least if they hide spinach in the chocolate chip cookies, their child is getting SOME vegetables.

It's the strategy of a desperate parent, but it ultimately fails. Here are some of the problems with hiding healthy foods in unhealthy junk-food dishes.

Kids don't learn to like the taste of the food. If the healthy food is hidden so well that it can't be tasted, then your child will never learn to like the taste of the food. Young children often have to taste a food 12 - 15 times in order to like it. If spinach is hidden in chocolate cake, your child could eat the cake a hundred times and still not learn to like spinach.

The caloric content skyrockets. Most healthy foods are low in calories. If you hide 50 calories of spinach (a child-size serving) in 300 calories of chocolate cake, the nutrition of the spinach has to be spread out over 350 calories. What was a vitamin, mineral, and phytonutrient dense food is now diluted by the empty calories. It becomes, at best, a moderately healthy food.

Your child is learning to like the taste of junk food. If your child eats chocolate cake often, she will learn to love chocolate cake. As far as your child's taste preference education goes, you are teaching her to love chocolate cake, not spinach. She may be getting a tiny bit of extra nutrition now, but when she's an adult, she'll reach for a slice of chocolate cake because it is "comfort food" from her childhood.

How to Hide Food and Make It Work

You can still use the Sneaky Chef strategy, if you use it wisely. If you add a food to a dish that your child loves, it will make her accept it more.

Here's how to SUCCESSFULLY hide unfamiliar or disliked foods in your child's food.

No Junk Food. Only "hide" food in nutritious dishes. Make a vow to feed your child unnutritious dishes very rarely -- perhaps once a month.

Use Your Child's Favorite Healthy Dishes. Do make sure that the dishes are ones that your child loves. Whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce may be a favorite of your child. Sneak some finely chopped spinach or broccoli in the tomato sauce.

Let the Flavor Stand Out. Make sure your child can taste the flavor of the healthy food. It doesn't have to stand out, but your child should have at least an unconscious awareness of the taste. Your goal is to make the taste of the healthy food familiar to your child, because children like familiar foods better.

After a Few Hides, Let Your Child Taste the Food on Her Own. Don't always hide the healthy food in dishes. Once you have "snuck" the food into your child's favorite dish a few times, present the food on its own, or as the main ingredient of a dish. Your child may now like the food because it has a familiar taste.

When it's successfully done, "hiding" food means gradually introducing it to your child, in a way that she will accept. It doesn't mean "fortifying" your child's junk food with a few tablespoons of vegetables.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Feeding Your Child Healthy Food Now Can Help Him Years Later

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Wendy Oddy and her colleagues at Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research have done some interesting studies finding that children who are fed healthy food have lower rates of anxiety and ADHD when they become teenagers.

I'm concentrating this blog on HOW to teach children the taste of healthy foods, not WHY they should eat healthy foods. But sometimes, when your child seems to be taking weeks to learn to like Brussels sprouts, or your mother-in-law is insisting that your kids eat sweets because it will "give them energy to grow", it's nice to know that the effort you are making today may make a huge difference in your child's life later on.

Keep with it!

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Teach Your Child to Like the Taste of Fresh Food

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Strawberries picked right off the vine, bread still warm from the oven, steak sizzling from the grill. There’s something truly delicious about fresh food.

Fresh foods are delicious, and also nutritious. Most plants lose nutrients after they’ve been picked. The tastes of old food – rancidity, rottenness, staleness – tend to repel people. The reason for this is obvious. Old food is low in nutrients and high in microbes.

The taste of fresh food can be a powerful ally. One of your child’s greatest enemies in his food education is processed food. Processed food companies have perfected foods that are bland, sugary, fatty, and that appeal to children. As with cigarettes, if children learn to like processed foods when they are young, they will be buying similar processed food when they are adults. The processed food companies will have a customer for life.

However, processed food companies cannot duplicate the taste of fresh produce and home cooked meals because their food is not fresh. Even the newest foods in the supermarket have probably been away from the factory for at least a week.

Processed food companies try to make up for the lack of real food taste by appealing to the sweet-fat-bland tastes. Even though the food doesn’t really taste good, children who are fed processed food learn to like the insipid flavors because they are familiar, and because they associate them with the food’s addictive qualities.

If you feed your child fresh, tasty food, he will find the processed food repugnant. Since most processed food is unnutritious and has repetitive ingredients, this repugnance will help him avoid some of the biggest nutritional enemies in our modern culture.

Fruits and vegetables taste especially good when they are fresh. Children who balk at lifeless supermarket broccoli may love the vivid taste of fresh picked broccoli.

Tips and Techniques

Most of your meals should be home-cooked. If you aren’t skilled in cooking, you can learn by doing – start with a few easy recipes and slowly increase your repertoire.

Find recipes that are quick and easy. Quickly sautéing some vegetables and adding some eggs and cheese to make scrambled eggs with vegetables doesn’t really take much longer than microwaving a breakfast meal.

Eat at restaurants that serve real, fresh food from basic ingredients. Avoid fast-food restaurants (you don’t want to teach your child to like the taste of fast food) and cheap chain restaurants (they often have processed ingredients delivered to them).

Use the freshest vegetables that you can. Buy local produce in season. Go to a farmer’s market.

Sign up for community supported agriculture. With community supported agriculture, you buy a share of a farm at the beginning of the growing season. Each week, you’ll receive a delivery of tasty fresh vegetables.

Experiment with growing your own vegetables. Nothing is tastier than fresh peas or tomatoes off the vine.

Want to learn more techniques?
25 Ways to Get Your Child to Love Vegetables

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Eat Vegetables for Breakfast

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

In Western cultures, vegetables are rarely served for breakfast. This is unfortunate.

Breakfast is a great time to serve your child vegetables.  Here are some reasons why:

Breakfast Provides Another Opportunity for Vegetables

In order to teach your child to love vegetables (the food group with the longest learning curve), you'll want to give them to him at least 3 times a day. If you serve vegetables for breakfast, that only leaves two more servings to think about.

Breakfast Foods Are Learned For Life

People tend to be conservative about their breakfast choices. A person who happily eats a wide variety of dishes for lunch or dinner may eat the same bagel, cream cheese, and coffee every day. If you get your child accustomed to a vegetable for breakfast in his early formative years, he may continue this habit for the rest of his life.

Vegetables for Breakfast Makes Kids Like Them for Lunch 

A third reason to serve vegetables for breakfast is that kids tend to eat MORE vegetables if they've had them recently. It seems counterintuitive, but kids who eat a vegetable get into a "healthy mode" of appetite. You probably have noticed in yourself that if you eat a doughnut, you don't have much of a desire for a salad, but if you eat a tasty bowl of vegetable soup, other healthy food seems tasty. If you feed your child a vegetable for breakfast, he'll be more interested in vegetables for lunch, snacks, and dinner.

Read more about this technique here.

What is a Healthy Breakfast?

The healthiest breakfast should have some protein (eggs, sausage, cheese, etc.), vegetables and fruit.

How to Serve Vegetables for Breakfast

If I've convinced you to feed your child vegetables for breakfast, your next question is probably "how?". What vegetable recipes are still respectable breakfast food? Most people think of cereal, bakery items, eggs, and bacon when they think of breakfast food. Vegetables rarely factor in.

One option is the time-honored hash browns or home fries. You can use frozen hash browns or microwave a potato in the microwave, chop it up, and saute it in olive oil. Potatoes are just a start to this dish, however. You can add almost any vegetable to the potatoes to make them more interesting and nutritious. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, garlic, fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, oregano), sweet potatoes...and any other vegetable you happen to have in your refrigerator. Just chop them up and cook them along with the potatoes.

Another time-honored option is the omelet or scramble. Saute chopped vegetables in olive oil, add herbs, and then scramble in an egg. More experienced cooks (or those with more time) can pour the vegetables on a plate temporarily, and then use the same pan for cooking an omelet, with the vegetables added as a filling.

Once you get used to eating vegetables for breakfast, you can branch out into less conventional breakfast dishes. Your young child doesn't know the conventions of his culture yet, so a side of buttered lima beans (call them "breakfast beans"!) won't phase him at all.

Remember, if you teach your 3 year old to like vegetables for breakfast, he may still be making vegetables for himself when he's 30 years old! A lifetime of good eating habits begins in the first few years.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Vegetable of the Week: Zucchini

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Each week, start teaching your child to like a new vegetable. Follow these 4 rules:

1. Feed each vegetable to your child twice a week.

2. Give your child the vegetable two times a week for six weeks. That’s a total of 12 times. After 12 presentations, your child will probably like the vegetable. If she doesn’t, wait for a few months and start the whole process again.

3. Don’t feed the same vegetable to your child two days in a row. Wait a day or two before giving her the vegetable again.

4. If your child tastes the vegetable, count it as a success. She may spit it out, but her brain is still registering the taste.

Six weeks from today your child will probably be an zucchini lover!

About Zucchini

Zucchini is a sweet, mild-tasting vegetable, and many children like it. Its one drawback is that the middles can be somewhat slimy. Children have an instinct to avoid slimy foods, because sliminess is an indicator that a food may be rotten.

If your child seems to dislike the texture, start by stir-frying the zucchini (olive oil and garlic work wonderfully here). Once your child learns to love zucchini this way, you can boil it.

Choose very firm, dark green zucchini.

Vary the dishes so your child doesn't get bored. Here are some quick and easy dishes:

1. After you cook the zucchini, add some shredded parmesan and butter.

2. Zucchini can be stir-fried in olive oil and garlic. Add some shredded parmesan cheese on top and microwave for 30 seconds to melt the parmesan.

3. Zucchini can be sliced lengthwise and served with dip.

Post a comment and tell me how it went!

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

What is This Weird Stuff on My Plate? New Food From a Child's Point of View

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Imagine that you're a 3 year old child. You sit down to dinner and look at your plate. Staring up at you are two unidentifiable lumps. Your task is to eat them.

A little scary, huh? Any adult confronted with unidentifiable lumps would poke around with a fork, or ask someone what they were.

Children are born with instincts that protect them from eating poisonous plants. In prehistoric days, eating something without knowing what it was could kill you.

Children will be reassured if a trusted parent tells them a little bit about the food that they are eating.

Tips and Techniques

When you give your child a new food, tell her what it's name is. If she is getting artichokes for the first time, tell her that they are called artichokes. Add a few fun facts. Tell her that artichokes are a kind of thistle, just like the prickly ones in the back yard.

When you give your child a mixture of foods, like stew, stir fry, or casserole, identify the ingredients. Point at each ingredient and say "That's chicken, that's carrots, that's an onion. Your child will look relieved because she doesn't have to put an unfamiliar and potentially yucky food in her mouth.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Grow Some Vegetables

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Studies have found that children who grow vegetables end up liking the vegetables better.  Growing vegetables taps into many unconscious instincts that children have for learning to like foods. 

Children like to "get to know" a food before they trust it enough to eat it.  This makes sense if you consider that in prehistoric times, many wild plants were poisonous.  A child who ate new plants indiscriminately might get poisoned.

Gardening is a great way for your child to get acquainted with a vegetable and get to feel that it's safe.  It's your own creation, and you can watch it grow from a tiny seed to a huge, fruiting adult plant.

Home grown vegetables and fruits are also extremely tasty.  One of the reasons that many children don't like fruits and vegetables in the modern world is because they aren't fresh.  The freshest vegetables in the supermarket are probably a week old.  The taste of a fresh tomato plucked off the plant will make even a confirmed tomato-hating kid love tomatoes.

Tips and Techniques

If you love gardening, you and your child can plant a vegetable garden.  If you're less of a gardener, or you don't have much time, you can still grow a pot or two of tomatoes or herbs.

There are many beautiful perennial fruit trees.  Plant a cherry or apple tree in the back yard.  The flowers are gorgeous and sweet-smelling.  And your child will love to pick the fruit.

Consider planting hardy, perennial herbs outside, like mint.  Many herbs are as hardy as weeds, and you'll always have fresh herbs to throw in a salad or soup.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Switching From a Junk Food Diet to a Healthy Diet May Make Your Child Stop Eating -- But Don't Worry!

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food  OK, you've decided to take the plunge and feed your child nothing but healthy food. You've thrown away all sugary foods -- candy bars, ice cream, granola bars are in the trash. You've stocked up on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and other healthy foods. The frozen kids meals, crackers, and chips are gone.

The day has come. You put a plate of healthy food in front of your child. He doesn't eat it! Never mind, you think, he'll eat the next meal. But no...day after day goes by and your poor darling barely eats anything!

You begin to worry. Maybe your child just doesn't like healthy food. It's better to give him a little junk food than to starve him, isn't it? You begin to waver in your resolve.

Rest assured. It is completely normal for kids to stop eating if they don't get their junk food. Scientists have found that rats will starve themselves if they have become addicted to junk food and the junk food is taken away. Your child is used to getting a high from junk food, just like a cocaine addict does. Normal, healthy food simply doesn't provide that high.

What the article doesn't mention is that after a period of withdrawal, junk-food-addicted rats will start to eat normal food. If you persevere and continue to give your child healthy food, he will start to eat it. And, because he is no longer addicted to junk food, he will actually like the healthy food. It will taste good to him.

Tips and Techniques

Go cold turkey with your child. Remove all junk food and give him healthy food. Expect a period of time where he will not eat very much. This is normal. After a few weeks of withdrawal, your child will emerge with a new palate, uncorrupted by the addiction of junk food.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Vegetable of the Week: Broccoli

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Each week, start teaching your child to like a new vegetable. Follow these 4 rules:

1. Feed each vegetable to your child twice a week.

2. Give your child the vegetable two times a week for six weeks. That’s a total of 12 times. After 12 presentations, your child will probably like the vegetable. If she doesn’t, wait for a few months and start the whole process again.

3. Don’t feed the same vegetable to your child two days in a row. Wait a day or two before giving her the vegetable again.

4. If your child tastes the vegetable, count it as a success. She may spit it out, but her brain is still registering the taste.

Six weeks from today your child will probably be an broccoli lover!

About Broccoli

Broccoli has a reputation for being a vegetable that kids hate, but actually many children choose it as one of their favorite vegetables.

Choose very firm, dark green broccoli.

Broccoli is best steamed. This allows it to be cooked to a very tender consistency without becoming sulfury. Cook for 15 minutes in a steamer.

Alternatively, you can boil broccoli for 5 to 7 minutes.

Children also like stir-fried broccoli or raw broccoli with dip.

Vary the broccoli dishes so that your child remains interested. Here are some quick and easy dishes:

1. After you cook the broccoli, add some shredded sharp cheddar and put in the microwave for 30 seconds to melt the cheddar. Simple but delicious!.

2. Broccoli can be stir-fried in olive oil and garlic. Add some shredded parmesan cheese on top and microwave for 30 seconds to melt the parmesan.

3. Make a delicious cream of broccoli soup. Chop the broccoli well and boil it in vegetable or chicken broth with garlic and any herbs you want to add. Make a quick roux: 1) Melt 1/2 stick butter in a pan. Add a few tablespoons of flour and stir for a few minutes. 3) Add a cup of milk and bring to a boil, stirring until it thickens. Pour the milk mixture in the broccoli mixture. Puree in a blender and serve.

Post a comment and tell me how it went!

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Give Your Newborn Baby TASTES of Real Food

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Flavors in Breastmilk Teach Babies the Taste of Food

Believe it or not, babies actually learn how food tastes in the first four months of their lives, before you even feed them solid food! They learn these tastes from breastmilk.

The food that you eat finds its way into your milk, flavoring it. If you eat garlic, your milk will have a faint taste of garlic. If you eat carrots, your milk will have a faint taste of carrots.

Babies use this subtle information to learn lifelong taste preferences. The faint flavors of breastmilk are telling them which foods are safe and nutritious. If Mom has eaten these foods and survived, these foods have passed the test. Nature has given babies a valuable tool for learning to like safe and nutritious foods which will be part of their diets in upcoming years.

Formula-Fed Babies Are Missing Out on Valuable Lessons

Formula-fed babies have a disadvantage. The taste of formula is the same at each meal. These babies don't experience the subtle tastes of garlic, carrots, or broccoli, so they don't learn to like these healthy tastes in the early, formative weeks of their lives.

Scientists have found that formula-fed babies are pickier eaters later on in life because they don't get these valuable taste lessons in their formative years.

Giving Tastes of Healthy Foods Helps Babies Like Them For the Rest of Their Lives

Both formula-fed and breastfed babies can learn healthy tastes in their early weeks if you give them TASTES of real food. Here's what I mean by a taste. A taste is not a spoonful, or even a dab. A taste is a tiny smear, so small that it is barely taste-able. Put a tiny smear on the mouthpiece of the bottle. Breastfeeding moms can smear it on their skin where the baby latches on.

Give TASTES, Not Servings

Your doctor may have told you not to feed your child solid food until 4 months. They are correct. However, this is not feeding. It is tasting.

Doctors don't like to encourage early feeding of solid foods for these reasons.

• They're concerned about choking.
• They're concerned that feeding solid food will make babies drink less milk.
• They're afraid that early feeding will cause allergies.

Because you're only giving a TINY amount, babies won't choke or drink less milk.

Add Tiny Amounts to Formula

You can also add tiny amounts of food to formula. Make sure the consistency is as thin as milk so your baby doesn't choke. 

Early Tastings Don't Cause Allergies

The concern about allergies is very interesting because recent research has made it controversial. Scientists used to think that feeding a baby a food early in life would cause an allergy to that food. The rationale was that babies' immature immune systems would overreact.

However, recent research has found exactly the opposite! Many recent studies (including this one and this one) have found that giving young babies food seems to prevent allergies to that food.

More importantly for your mission to teach your baby to like healthy foods, feeding babies solid food early seems to make them less picky later on in life. Children who start eating solid food after six months are pickier than children who start eating solid food early because they don't experience food tastes in their formative years. And children that are pickier are more likely to eat junk food instead of healthy food.

How Much To Give

Give your baby a tiny, tiny taste of healthy foods like a drop of carrot juice, a speck of mashed avocado, or a tiny smidgen of juice from a ripe peach.

Your goal is to only give him enough so that he tastes the food.

Make sure the consistency of the food is similar to milk so that your baby does not choke. You can mix foods like avocado with milk until it is runny and then put a drop or two in your babies mouth.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Here Are Some Other Ways To Help Your Child Learn to Love Healthy Foods

Let Your Child Smell Flavorful Foods
Feeding Your Child Healthy Food Now Can Help Him Years Later

Children Like the Food They Grow Up With 

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Find Basic Recipes that Your Child Loves and Add New Vegetables

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Children will like a brand new vegetable better if it is served in a dish that they already love. Start early by giving your child dishes that are versatile in their ingredients. Cheese sauce, for example, is loved by many children, and can be poured over practically any vegetable. Once your child loves 5 or 6 versatile dishes, you can use them to introduce new vegetables.

Here are some versatile dishes that children love:

Cheese Sauce: (not the nasty powdered stuff that comes in packaged mac & cheese, but the homemade version): To make, add a few tablespoons of flour to 1/4 to 1/2 stick of melted butter or 1/4 cup olive oil. Cook over medium heat, stirring. Add about a cup of milk. Stir and cook until it boils and becomes thick. Then add 1/2 to 1 cup grated sharp cheddar.

Lemon butter: Melt some butter in the microwave. Add a few squeezes from a fresh lemon slice. (Alternatively, you can use olive oil instead of butter, or lime juice instead of lemon.)

Simple Delicious Vinaigrette and Shredded Parmesan: Mix extra virgin olive oil with about half as much balsamic vinegar. Pour it over salad or other raw or lightly cooked and cooled vegetables. Sprinkle with a large helping of shredded (not grated) parmesan.

You can also find "dishes" at your supermarket. A child who loves ketchup, for example, can pour ketchup on almost anything and love it.

You can find good quality salad dressings at the produce section. You can use sour cream or yogurt as a dip.

Don't be afraid of the fat content of your versatile dishes. Young children need more fat than adults. In addition, the fat helps absorb some of the valuable nutrients in vegetables.

Once your child learns to love a few versatile dishes, you can use them as a gateway to new vegetables and other healthy foods.

For more on this topic, see Put Ketchup on Everything

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Giving Your Child a Larger Helping of Fruit Makes Them Eat More

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

A recent study found that giving kids twice as much fruit on their plates made them eat more of the fruit. They ate almost half again as much fruit as they did if the portion size was smaller. So if they normally ate four strawberries, a big portion would make them eat six.

Tips and Techniques

Give your child an extra large helping of fruit. Of course you don't want to waste the fruit, so if your child leaves some on her plate, feel free to eat it. If she watches you eat it, it will help her model your good eating habits. And fruit is just as good for parents as it is for kids!

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

Vegetable of the Week: Asparagus

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Each week, start teaching your child to like a new vegetable. Follow these 4 rules:

1. Feed each vegetable to your child twice a week.

2. Give your child the vegetable two times a week for six weeks. That’s a total of 12 times. After 12 presentations, your child will probably like the vegetable. If she doesn’t, wait for a few months and start the whole process again.

3. Don’t feed the same vegetable to your child two days in a row. Wait a day or two before giving her the vegetable again.

4. If your child tastes the vegetable, count it as a success. She may spit it out, but her brain is still registering the taste.

Six weeks from today your child will probably be an asparagus lover!

About Asparagus

Choose thin, firm-looking asparagus spears. If they're thick, you can break them in two and throw away the woody bottoms.

Asparagus is wonderful steamed or boiled. Cook for 10 minutes. For babies, cook them about 50% longer, or 15 minutes, and mash or puree.

Vary the asparagus dishes so that your child remains interested. Here are some quick and easy dishes:

1. Melt some butter or olive oil in the microwave. Squeeze some juice from a lemon, and add some shredded parmesan.

2. Put asparagus in an omelet. It's a great breakfast vegetable.

3. Make a garlic butter by microwaving butter in the microwave with a small clove of chopped garlic. Pour it on the asparagus.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.


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Teach Your Child to Like Spicy Food

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

Spicy foods are spicy because they trigger pain receptors in your mouth. Given that they cause pain, it's weird that humans even like to eat it. Animals won't touch the stuff!

Spicy foods trigger your pain receptors so much that they actually kill them. Capsaicin (the spicy ingredient in peppers) is called an excitotoxin. Basically, that means that it makes the pain neurons fire so often that they die. Never fear, though. They grow back.

People in countries that eat spicy food don't think the food they eat is very spicy, because their pain receptors have been killed. However, if a person from Mexico (or another country that eats spicy food) goes to a non-spicy country like the USA for a few months, and then returns to Mexico, they will suddenly find that the food is too spicy! That's because their pain receptors have grown back.

Tips and Techniques

Feed your child spicy food often. If you want to feed your children spicy food, you'll need to give it to them often. Not too spicy at first, but often enough so that their pain receptors get "pruned." Of course, giving it to them often will also get them used to spiciness, and eventually they'll probably like it.

Model eating spicy food. Here's how Mexican kids learn to like spicy food. Mexican families put a bowl of hot salsa/enchilada sauce on the table. Everyone dips their tortillas in it. When kids are about 3, they start dipping their tortillas in it as well. Then they cry because it's too hot. Then, after they've stopped crying, they dip their tortillas in again! Kind of crazy, but that's human nature! Over a course of weeks or months, they dip their tortillas in the sauce more and more.

Start at age 3. Mexican families don't give their kids spicy foods before age 3, so that seems to be the minimum age that kids can start learning to like spicy food.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.

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Giving Your Kid Vegetables Before Dinner Makes Them Eat More Vegetables At Dinnertime!

By Julia Moravcsik, PhD, author of Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food

A recent study found that giving children carrots before their lunch actually made them eat MORE of the broccoli in their lunch. And the more carrots they ate, the more broccoli they ate.

This is pretty surprising at first glance. You would think that if a kid ate carrots, he would get tired of vegetables and eat less broccoli later on. But starting out a meal eating healthy foods puts the kid in a mode where he enjoys healthy food.

Tips and Techniques

Every night, set out a bowl of vegetables and dip while you're making dinner.  Your child will be hungry, which will make the vegetables taste better.

Would you like a simple, easy-to-follow program that will teach your child to love healthy food? See my new book Teach Your Child to Love Healthy Food on amazon.com.


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