What should I know to help my child eat nutritious foods?
- The first year of solid healthy foods is an important time to shape your baby’s feeding preferences.
- Giving your child a variety of tastes and textures can encourage a balanced diet.
- Frequent contact with food is important for your child to eat.
- Family meals are key to your child’s love of adventurous dining.
Everything starts with taste
Taste imprinting describes the development of taste preferences in children through exposure to foods and odors during the first 1,000 days of life. The different flavors your baby eats while in the womb, while breastfeeding, and when he or she is first introduced to solids will influence your baby’s food choices for years to come.
This means that from the moment of conception you have the opportunity to instill a love of nutritious food by teaching your child to eat.
Why are first foods and first meals so important?
Babies will accept new foods more easily than normal for the first year or two. Take this opportunity to offer different products, flavors and textures.
Once your baby is ready, start feeding purees or very soft healthy foods (baby food and toddler food) with a spoon and the fun begins. Every few days, try a new food from each food group, including vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry, low-mercury fish, nut butters, sugar-free full-fat dairy products (excluding milk), whole grains, and healthy fats.
Once you know that your child can tolerate a food (no allergy or intolerance to that food), introduce the food as a single flavor or with other foods.
Around the age of 2, a child may develop a fear of food. This is a refusal or reluctance to eat new foods. You may also notice that your child starts rejecting the food they eat. This horrible food picking habit affects almost all children between the ages of 2 and 5-8.
But with time, patience and repetition, your baby will become more adventurous with food again.
Constantly introduce new foods or disliked foods to your child without forcing them to eat them
Once your baby starts eating solids regularly, constant exposure to food and textures is very important to developing their taste buds. In fact, your toddler may need to experience 10 or more flavors before accepting and liking a new food.
Bottom line: One of the best ways to get your child interested in healthy foods is to offer them frequently.
The key word here is “display”. Studies show that pressuring children to eat healthy foods like vegetables can be counterproductive and cause them to eat less of those foods in the future.
Shared responsibility is just as important to healthy eating as a healthy diet
Responsive feeding is very important for babies and toddlers. It is listening to the baby’s hunger and satiety signals. If your toddler loses interest in food (either because he’s full or because he doesn’t want to eat certain foods), don’t force him to eat more.
For children and the elderly, share responsibility. Eat a balanced diet (protein, grains, vegetables and fruits) and let your child decide what and how much to eat. Don’t force yourself to eat the whole plate or force yourself to take just one bite. Just seeing that food over and over again (and watching yourself eat it) is the first step to eventually eating it.
Tips for getting your child to enjoy nutritious foods
No need to worry about the order in which you feed your baby
You may have heard that children are more likely to eat vegetables if they are given vegetables before fruit, but research has not confirmed this. Babies have an innate appetite for sweet foods, so eating vegetables early and often is an important way to get them to taste and like sweet foods.
Instead of worrying about the order in which foods are served, focus on a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and proteins. Serve these products regularly to increase awareness of aroma, taste and texture.
Introduce your child to different materials as early as possible
When your baby is ready to grow, it’s important to give him a variety of nutrients. If you start with pureed foods, move on to chunky or pureed purees, then soft snacks, and finally solid snacks.
Studies have shown that waiting longer than 9-10 months before eating more lumpy or solid foods can lead to picky eaters and avoid other solid foods as the child grows.
Don’t let an “ugly” face hold you back.
Babies are more open to new foods and tastes during their first year of life, but that doesn’t mean they won’t make funny faces. This is a very common and common reaction to new foods and textures.
Staring, pointy lips, and wrinkled noses may make your child think they don’t like food, but they don’t. It’s the first-time babies try most of these new tastes and textures, and their faces only show the baby’s initial curiosity and wonder.
Repeated touching of the food may cause the child to start eating it, even if he continues to make faces.
The goal is to continue offering these foods until the child stops fussing and then introduce these foods into the child’s regular diet.
Eat with your children and enjoy meals together as a family as much as possible
From the very beginning, introduce your child to a variety of healthy food options and good eating habits during regular family meals.
Babies will imitate their loved ones, so it’s a good idea to feed everyone the same food as often as possible (changing foods and textures according to your child’s abilities). Studies show that children who eat regularly in their families tend to eat healthier foods and are more likely to develop healthy relationships with food.
