Growing at Home - Helping with Picky Eaters
We've had some fun putting together new recipes to send to you that hopefully the whole family will enjoy. While spending extra time at home, this is a perfect opportunity to be exploring new recipes with your family. However, we know that some of you have some very picky eaters on your hands, you want them to try new foods in an easy and stress-free way, and we have some tips to share with you.
Jenny Friedman, Nutritionist, has some guides and suggestions to help your picky eaters expand their pallet. A few of these include:
Positive Reinforcement - giving specific verbal praise. You can also use token systems or charts so that kids can track their own progress.
Food Chaining - This means using a food that has similar qualities to a food that your child is already familiar with to get them to the targeted food. For example, to help your child move from chicken nuggets to fish, you could try different brands and shapes of chicken nuggets and fish sticks until you eventually reach a normal cooked fish.
Don't beg them to try new foods - This makes them even more conscious that the food is new and unfamiliar. Similar to food chaining, point out qualities of the new food that are similar to foods they are familiar with to encourage them to take a bite.
Mealtime Management - Kids benefit from routines and clear expectations, so limit grazing and schedule 3 meals and 1-3 snacks daily. Model the behaviors you want to see. You can introduce them to foods outside of mealtimes with cooking, gardening, shopping, etc.
One camper mom told me that to encourage her picky eater to try new things, she incorporated a 3 bite policy. With every new food, he must take 3 bites; one to try, one to taste, and one to form an opinion. Please share with us any tips or tricks you have for getting your picky eaters to try a new food item.
Keep an eye out for tomorrow's new grilling recipe from Chef Jonathan!