Eat Your Child's Food! It Will Make Them Like It Better

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

This article is about a strange technique for getting your young child to like a food.  To make your child like her food, you should eat it yourself!

I'm not talking about eating the same KIND of food.  I'm talking about eating the actual food off their plates!

There are two versions of this technique. 

The Tricky "I Want Your Food" Technique

Imagine that you've served your toddler a healthy meal of vegetable frittata and grapes.  Your toddler eats the frittata, but leaves the grapes.  You're not surprised -- you know that your little sweetums is not a grape lover.

"Oh, YES!" you say, using your best acting skills.  "I'm so glad you didn't eat your grapes because I LOVE grapes!"

Grab her plate and wolf down the grapes, making suitable relishing noises.

If your child is like most children, this will tell her 2 things:

1. Grapes are tasty because Mom (or Dad) is loving them.
2. Someone has taken my grapes away and is enjoying them.  I WANT THEM BACK!

Children have a paradoxical desire to like things that other people take from them, even if they hated them a second ago.  Heaven help the parent who, within the sight of their child, throws away a cheap toy that their child no longer plays with.  Immediately it becomes the favorite toy!

Use this technique sparingly, and only for young children who aren't sophisticated enough to catch on that you're only pretending.

The Loving "We're Sharing This Food" Technique

Children have a natural instinct to eat the same foods as their parents.  You can see this same instinct in many mammals.  A young fawn will push its mother's nose aside and eat the same plants that its mothers was eating.

You can (and should) encourage this instinct by eating the same foods as your child.

However, to really take advantage of this instinct, eat from the same plate as your baby or toddler.  Share a plate of food with your child.  You can sit your child in your lap so she can see the food. Your child's brain will definitely get the message that you and she are eating the same food!

Sharing a plate is a cozy, comfy, and fun thing to do.  Your child will associate the taste of grapes with the warmth of your lap, and will like them more as a result.

Our Primitive Ancestors Shared Their Food

People a long time ago (and today in some cultures) ate from the same plates.  It is a time-honored way of teaching children to eat the same food as the rest of the tribe or family.  It added motivation to eat in the form of mild competition (if I don't eat this then brother will get it) and role modeling.

What About Germs?

You may be concerned that sharing plates will spread germs.  This is a valid concern.  Young children can catch dangerous germs from their parents, including those that cause cavities.

With a little care, you can share a plate and still avoid spreading germs.  Avoid touching your mouth if you're eating finger food.  If you're eating spoon food, use a different spoon for you and for baby, and spoon from different parts of the plate.

What About Table Manners?

You may be concerned that your child will learn bad table manners. You don't want your child grabbing food off Grandma's plate at Thanksgiving!

This technique is for babies and toddlers.  You have plenty of time to stop before your child gets old enough to be expected to have table manners.  Don't worry about manners, mess, or mayhem this early in your child's life.  The important thing is to have fun and teach the taste of healthy foods!

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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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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