Trying New Foods: Parent-Friendly Strategies to Introduce Variety
As parents and caregivers, many of us find ourselves in a stage of life when the kids’ menu at home becomes a revolving door of the same five meals. We want them to broaden their palates just as much as we don’t want to cook another grilled cheese. We worry about their nutritional intake, about the social consequences of being a “picky eater”, and about the meltdown that may or may not await us at dinnertime. Try as we may, googling “kids dinner recipes” is nary the help we think it surely will be. I applaud the ambition of these food bloggers, but my child is just not eating hidden-broccoli, green cheese sauce, “Monster Mash Mac and Cheese”.
As Boston’s leading nanny agency, we understand that setting your children up for success is paramount in all aspects of parenting and caregiving, and more do-able than you might think in this case. If we can incorporate evidence-based practices, consistency, and neutrality in our demeanors when introducing new foods to our children, we might sooner be seeing success at meal time. Here are four strategies for the successful immersion of new foods into your child’s rotation.
1) Consistency
The research suggests that repeated exposures to foods increases the likelihood of your child warming up to trying them and eventually eating them regularly. Importantly, the amount of times you expose a child to a certain food can be quite high before you start to see engagement. Try not to give up! “Among studies demonstrating repeated exposure effects during middle childhood, increases in target food acceptance have been shown following 2–9 exposures”, (Ehrenberg, S., et al.). If you worry about food waste, choose a food that the adults in the house will already be eating at that meal and share a small “tasting” amount with your child. This may look like placing a singular green bean on your child’s plate nine nights in a row–that is okay!
There is often a time between early and middle childhood when children decide they are no longer interested in many foods they had been eating with no problem. This is why it is beneficial to be consistently exposing them to a variety of foods both in early childhood (birth to six-years-old) and middle childhood (six-years-old to eleven-years-old); it lays the foundation for the foods they choose and their willingness to try new foods later in life.
“During the third year of life, most children enter a neophobic phase during which previously liked foods are no longer accepted and introduction of new foods becomes difficult. However, habits of eating a variety of foods acquired before the neophobic phase track further on into childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. This underlines the importance of promoting the access to a variety of foods in early childhood”, (Nicklaus, S., 2008). The moral of the story is: when the repeated exposures start to tally up, don’t get discouraged!
2) Food of the Week
While effortful, Food of the Week is a fun and engaging strategy to introduce new foods. It entails choosing one food or ingredient and, throughout the course of one week, creating opportunities for exposure and learning through various lenses.
For example, in Autumn I often choose corn as a Food of the Week for my preschoolers. We start by going to the grocery store together to pick out what looks the best from the selection. Once we return, we shuck the corn from its husk together, creating a game of “treasure hunting” when the golden corn cob is revealed beneath the green leaves. We laugh together when one of the children uses the silky fibers to pretend they have long hair. We spend time talking about what the corn feels like, smells like, and looks like. We even laid out a roll of easel paper, spread paint on the corn cobs and rolled them along the paper to create “corn art”. One day we popped popcorn on the stove together, another we touched frozen corn kernels before watching them boil in a pot on the stove, and we even baked corn bread. Involving the children in household tasks, such as cooking, promotes high self-esteem and fosters a bond between you and them. Also, when they get to see the finished product of their work, they're more likely to want to taste test it.
Talking about the ways in which different cultures eat corn was exciting for the children, as well. We read about elote in Mexico and binatog in the Phillipines. The children enjoyed picture books about Native Americans and their historical relationship to corn.
By the end of the week, the children were eating corn-on-the-cob. Not all liked it, but all willingly and enthusiastically tried it.
3) Visual Schedules
Children make very few of the decisions affecting their own lives. When we allow them a perceived sense of control they are better able to regulate their emotional reactions. That is why visual schedules are a helpful tool around mealtimes. You can create a Monday-Friday calendar and print out small pictures of various foods that you know the child will eat and foods you know will be a first encounter.
Then, laminate all materials and apply velcro to each day and to each food option. That way, each morning the child can choose from a selection of your pre-approved menu items and assign them to the dinner menu for later that night.
Creating predictability and a sense of agency for the child sets everyone up for success. The child has their emotional cup filled from the feeling of control over that choice, while we know that we have facilitated a pool of options to feel proud of and contributes to forward progress in their journey towards trying new foods.
This is an example of a visual schedule. You can create them for one meal, if you like.
4) Compassion
Don’t fall into absolutist thinking patterns around this topic; compassion and patience are the best things you can offer yourself and your child. If your son, daughter, or child you're responsible for are going off to school or to bed with full tummies from sufficient calories for their age…you’ve already won (even if those calories are coming from their third grilled cheese this week).
Childhood is full of different seasons that come and go, try not to be too hard on yourself. According to developmental theorist Jean Piaget, children before the age of seven are immersed in centration. Their growing brains have only developed enough to be able to acknowledge one characteristic of a situation at a time. Simply, they cannot yet hold two feelings at once: “That food is new so it must be yucky” and “Maybe if I try it I’ll realize I like it”.
In almost all cases, a child is going to cling to the former. Just like you, they too are doing the best they can…just from an earlier stage of brain development. Use your better judgement, some nights they may have the capacity to be scaffolded towards taking a risk and trying a new food with dinner; some nights they may need you to accept and support their “no thank you”. With consistency and neutral attitudes around eating, your children will evolve into adopting better eating habits. They’ll get there a lot faster without shame or pressure attached to meal time.
You’re already doing a great job by caring enough to support your child’s relationship with food. With a little consistency, creativity, and compassion, you can gently guide them toward greater variety without pressure or stress. Remember, progress at the dinner table doesn’t happen overnight—but every small step counts, and your efforts truly matter.
5) References
Nicklaus, S. (2008). Development of food variety in children. Food Quality and Preference, 19(6), 562-568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2008.05.005
Ehrenberg, S., Leone, L. A., Sharpe, B., Reardon, K., & Anzman-Frasca, S. (2019). Using repeated exposure through hands-on cooking to increase children's preferences for fruits and vegetables. Appetite, 142, 104347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.104347
Centration- a preoperational child's tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at a time, to the exclusion of other relevant aspects.
Neophobic- the fear of anything new, especially a persistent and abnormal fear. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine. In the context of children the term is generally used to indicate a tendency to reject unknown or novel foods
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