Expanding a Young Child's Palate

Example, example, example. He'll eat what you eat for the most part. Don't make it a big deal just start adding new things one at a time and see how it goes. Also, kids love to eat what they make or help making, it's a big key to getting them to eat healthy. They'll eat what they're a part of preparing even if it's just a taste.

Keep offering and offer in different ways. My DD won't eat a sandwich. But she'll eat bread and meat apart. Or she won't eat cooked broccoli or asparagus, but she'll eat them raw. If he'll eat chicken patties, will he eat a more healthy version? Overall, though, that doesn't sound too bad.

Offer it and show joy and enjoyment when you eat the food yourself. But be prepared for kiddo to say no and mean it. They do NOT eat when they get hungry enough. They decide they are not going to eat it and they don't. They go hungry and get sick.

There is no need to be a dictator over food. Showing enjoyment when trying new foods and making it known when you don't like something teaches kiddo that trying is not committing to eating it for ever. They can say they don't like it and not have to do more than that.

I took my kids to a buffet style restaurant every so often. They really enjoyed having so many choices, and they always ended up choosing to try something new each time. Other things that worked were going away to summer camps, having meals over at friends houses, and letting them help in the kitchen.

Hi P.--

(How refreshing! A legitimate question today!)
You know, I have a somewhat choosy eater who is often satisfied with a ploughman's plate for dinner or some non-challenging version of what we are having. Same age as your boy. What's worked for us is to just offer a little bit of what we are having as a side dish, that way it's not on his plate, and if he doesn't eat it, we take the attitude of 'more for me!'. I have found that I sometimes have to entice him two or three times before he gets around to trying something.

For example, he doesn't like tomatoes, but I thought he would enjoy some alphabet soup. So, I had to be clear that "I know it looks like tomatoes, but you really just taste a nice broth with lots of veggies. And look, you can find the letters of your name..." The third time I offered him a bite was the time he did try it and loved it.

We also talk about how taste buds change a lot. Taste buds grow in and die within 10-14 days, so we are constantly getting new ones.

You can also try to serve more 'naked' versions of things like chicken patties (instead, baked chicken breast with some nice seasoning), baked white fish with a nice sauce (homemade tartar sauce is wonderful), a homemade pizza or even buying your own crust, making the sauce and choosing healthy ingredients... I can't do mozzarella on pizza, so I order one at our favorite place with pesto, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, olives and feta cheese, which is tasty but has a lot less fat than mozz. Or just sprinkle some Parmesan... yum.

Depending on textures: you could go raw, or if doesn't like raw, you can blanche or steam or sautee a lot of things. Stir-fry is great in our house: we serve my son raw veggies slices of red pepper, carrot, celery and I will cook those in the wok for my husband and I. We all eat a small bit of rice with it and have some (admittedly processed) vegan chick'n strips. So, we are all eating relatively the same thing, just slightly different versions of it.

Lastly-- and some people will disagree with this, but I absolutely do not force my son to take a bite of anything he's not up for. The only thing I will force him to put into his body is medicine. :) Otherwise, I look at it this way: my palate took a lifetime to develop, and I have faith that a little kid who will eat capers, pea pods, sushi, pasta, pesto and so many other nice things will eventually grow out of his juvenile style of eating and WANT to eat a wider variety of things as he grows up. He's very healthy, so we don't worry about it. Serve (even if it's daily) the veggies and fruits your son *does* like and introduce other items in a low/no stress way.

can you try something new each week, let him have a say in it? make it fun.

maybe get a kids cookbook and let him help. suggest cooked sushi and use chopsticks. try a new restaurant once a month and don't let him order from the kids menu. how about a tapas restaurant, to try multiple new things.

I have to say that I am unbelievably encouraged that your husband, through medical school, is concerned about nutrition and it's effect on the degeneration of human health. In the traditional medical school, a student receives 15 hours of nutritional training, and doctors are typically painfully inadequate to speak on the issue of nutrition (aside from the small percentage who have personally spent much time pursuing further education apart from medical school).

Since your son is on the autism spectrum, I highly recommend a book called "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride. She is a cardiologist by training. After having a son diagnosed with autism, she spent much time learning and researching. She healed her son's autism through nutrition, and she has continued to help thousands of people through her practice, books and training other health professionals. May it change your home forever!

God's Grace to you,

Lisa :)

We do the "no thank you" bite in our home for kids and adults alike. If there's something new offered, every one gets a very small serving on their plate (a mouthful size) to try. If they don't like it, they can say no thank you and no food is wasted. If they want more, then great!
My kids struggle with some veggies. I make my own pasta/pizza sauces and will add veggies in to be blended with it. Depending on what you want your son to try, perhaps have it as a pizza topping since that is a food he already likes.

I understand that your child is on the spectrum, but he's past the age of getting special kid meals. Really, serving those at all is a mistake - I did that when my oldest was a toddler/preschooler and didn't repeat that mistake with my second kid.

My suggestion for picky eaters ... make whatever the main dish you want (meat/fish/poultry if you're not vegetarian). Then serve small servings of a lot of things on the side - a fruit plate, raw veggie, cooked veggie, a pasta or rice, cheese cubes, bread or muffins. Even if he hates the chicken alfredo, a kid can make a meal of brown rice, a couple of cheese cubes, melon, cucumbers and a corn muffin. Maybe not the greatest, but it's varied and you're not cooking a separate meal. The trick is to let him choose what he wants to try, and not suggest/bribe/wheedle him to have just a little taste of the whatever.

Good luck!

Offer him the foods you know he likes, along with new things. Don't insist that he eat foods he doesn't like after he has tried them and thumbed them down.
I never insisted that my daughter eat things she didn't like just because they were good for her. I won't eat foods I don't like, no matter how good for me they might be. Why should I expect her to choke down foods she didn't like?
Power struggles over food are an invitation to an eating disorder. As he gets older, offer him foods he may not have liked before. The number and proportion of our sweet, salty, sour, and bitter taste buds changes as we grow, and things that didn't taste good to us at six, we can't get enough of at eight.

What we did from when DS started eating solids was to feed him what we were eating. So we skipped the 'kid food' entirely. What adult really eats chicken fingers, fish sticks and frozen pizza? Since real food was all he ever ate, it was not an issue for us.

If we were starting out at age 7, I guess I would just eliminate the bad stuff and substitute real food. So, instead of fish sticks, cook real fish (an actual specific fish - food labelled 'fish' should really not be eaten) for the three of you. Since your son already eats fruit and some veggies, he will have something else on his plate that he does eat when you make something new. Also - there is good research showing that kids need to sample a new food up to 17 times before it becomes a reliably accepted food. So - persistence. Just keep making and eating a healthy and varied diet and keep putting it on your son's plate. Of course - get the chicken nuggets, fish sticks and pizza out of the house. If they're not in the house, it's a lot easier to say - 'sorry - no chicken nuggets'.

It is also HUGELY important to eat as a family. For nutritional reasons of course (kids are way more willing to try foods they see other people eating) but also kids who eat family meals do better in school, have fewer behavior issues and LOTS of other benefits.

Other things are plant a garden with your son (when it is time, but it is already time to start seedlings), frequent the local farmer's markets together, let him participate in menu planning - pick a new veggie together at the store and pick a recipe together. Also - my son likes a lot of foods raw better than cooked. So if it's safe (raw peas -yes, raw chicken - no), he often tries them that way too.

According to a pediatric nutritionist I heard speak once, hiding foods does NOTHING to increase their acceptance. So the Seinfeld approach doesn't help a child accept new foods at all.

Also - rewarding a child for trying a new food makes the child LESS likely to accept that food for the longer term. However, the food that is used as the reward does become more appealing. So if you reward a child for trying cake with a bite of broccoli, the cake becomes less appealing and the broccoli more so (within reason of course - cake rarely wins over broccoli).

First of all, it's great that your husband is looking at nutrition and not just medicine - so many doctors are starting to realize that they had little or no background in this while in med school and they are so dependent on medications. He probably knows, then, that the AMA recommended in 2002 that everyone (man, woman, child) supplement because our diets (and our food supply) just ain't what they used to be! And the Physicians Desk Reference will tell him (and every other doctor) that pills (including gummies, prescriptions, vitamins, etc.) just aren't highly absorbable, which is why many doctors call them "expensive urine" (high degree of elimination).

There's been a ton of work in nutritional epigenetics that has helped us all do better with supplementation. Comprehensive supplements (vs. a handful of vitamins that barely meet the RDIs set in the 1940s) and the new superfood shown to affect gene expression have also helped tremendously with kids on the spectrum. There are a lot of studies that indicate that our poor food supply is directly related to the increase in these disorders (ADD/ADHD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, you name it). In my work, we've seen a lot of improvement in kids with sensory issues in just a few weeks. I just came from a seminar on gene expression and there are well over 70 scientific papers on this alone - and everyone can do it if they connect with the right sources. I spend a lot of time doing consumer education on this. If this is done right, a lot of nutritional needs can be met, so there is not so much pressure on the highly textured foods you're having trouble getting into your child. And the foods we've been feeding ourselves and our kids, even after 30 years of "eat healthy and exercise" are not helping things - the problems are getting much worse!

That said, you can make subtle changes to increase the nutritional value of the foods he will eat. Remember that it takes something like 12-15 exposures to a new food for a child to embrace it, so don't give up the first time it doesn't go over big. Also, HIDE foods easily in other foods! Jessica Seinfeld's cookbooks give some great ideas, and there are others. I was a master at putting things in pancakes, pasta sauce, etc. Make your own nuggets with chicken you cut up yourself, then dip in egg and then a mixture of wheat germ and whole grain breadcrumbs, with or without cheese. Quick fry in olive oil to crisp up the sides (start with light until your son graduates to extra virgin), then finish in the oven, baked on a rack so the bottom doesn't get soggy. You can do the same with chicken patties (use ground chicken and make your own coatings with panko or regular crumbs, or wheat germ, and with fish filets.

Smoothies and gazpacho are great ways to hide veggies. Try kale chips - they're easy, cheap and fun. Try taco bars with healthy choices - kids who can choose their own add-ons often eat them. Make burgers with a lot of added refried or other mashed beans, defrosted frozen spinach (my son thought it was parsley), and some other flavors - if you use really lean meats (I mix grass-fed beef or bison with ground turkey) then you need to add moisture so they aren't dried out from the lack of fat. I use grated onions with their juice, frozen vegetables or leftover watery veggies like grated zucchini, tomato sauce or soy sauce, etc. You can also add flavors to anything that absorbs all the water - couscous, rice, quinoa. Try chicken or vegetable stock, tomato sauce, etc. If he'll eat tortillas or wraps, try adding shredded carrots and cucumbers, spreading hummus or refried beans, spinach, maybe sprouts.

I made falafel for my picky eater - he thought they were nuggets. You can use ground chickpeas, or buy the mix. I didn't like the heavy salt in the mix, so I diluted it with wheat germ, additional chickpeas (ground up) or chickpea flour, etc. Instead of just water, I used the leftover cooking water from steamed spinach and broccoli - nice 'green' veggie water for added flavor and nutrition. I fried them up like the nuggets - quick fry in healthy oil, finished in the oven. I made them with a meatball scoop or small ice cream scoop, but if you can find metal cookie cutters, you can put those right in the oil and put the mix inside them, turning with metal tongs. (Takes time but it's a fun activity for kids.)

Try vegetable and fruit breads - cranberry, zucchini, banana. Try fruit tarts or things like apple crisp with just oatmeal, fruit & a little sugar.

And kids like to dip things in other things - so offer vegetables (raw or blanched) with a little ranch dressing, tahini or hummus. Get a fancy cutter from the gourmet food store, and cut things in different shapes - or cut on the bias. Offer him choices - carrot spears, or carrot "coins" or diagonal carrots, or zig-zag edge carrot. That helps kids realize that the same food can look different and still be the delicious things they like.

You can hide a lot of things in soups and pasta sauces, which you can use on the pizzas he already likes. Make a "salad bar" array of things and then have everyone make their own pizza - try making a face or a design, which will require him to use different vegetables. Start with what he likes - like edamame "eyes" but try to add a red pepper strip "smile" and a broccoli floret "nose". Or make a "garden" with green bean "grass" and cauliflower "flowers" and mozzarella clouds above.

Once you find something he likes, don't change it for 3 more tries. Otherwise he'll get suspicious of everything you do.

What worked/works for us is this.
When we are at a restaurant we all order what we want.
And then our son gets a taste of things off our plates.
Next time we go out sometimes he'll order something different from his usual choices.
For some reason, tasting things off my plate has always worked better than putting portions of something new on his own plate.
It's less daunting if you don't like something - it's not staring back at you from your own plate.
And if he does like something, THEN I'll share a little bit more onto his own plate.

I never wanted to cook 2 different meals..the adult one & the kid one. I've had several friends who did this & when my kids would ask for something different, I'd tell them I wasn't a short order cook. Seems like 2 will like something, the 3rd will hate it. They would take turns being the "hater", so to speak.

So I did sneaky things, like using my "whirler", the little mini-processor that Cuisart makes, to grind up the hated veggies, like spinach, zucchini, carrots, etc. I put the veggies into soups, casseroles, pasta dishes, spaghetti sauce, pretty much everything. When they asked what something was, when they were little, I said spices & seasonings. As they have gotten older & started learning to cook, they would say, THAT goes into this dish? Yep, you've been eating it all your life. Oh, okay, than.

So, even though they all have something they say they "hate", for the most part, they are now eating all sorts of veggies, cut up regular like & liking them. Except for mushrooms. 2 out of 3 still hate them.

I make a killer homemade Clam Chowder that my oldest loves, that has always had "whirled" zucchini in it. When they were really young & 1 girl HATED cooked carrots, I tried whirling the carrots, but it turned the soup orange. LOL. Even the carrot hater will eat a couple of carrots in her soup now. Each girl has a favorite dish that she is into cooking by herself & will put in the veggies that they used to "hate".

Jerry Seinfeld's wife put out a cook book a couple of years ago that has a lot of purees to use in regular foods, to boast the nutrition of kid favorites that is really helpful too. Good Luck

When introducing new foods, I like to follow the 1/3 2/3 rule (a rule I made up I think!) That is to have 2/3 of the plate have familiar foods I know my kids will eat and 1/3 something new to try. Everyone has to at least try the new food. Having my kids spoon the food themselves (or at least watch my husband or I spoon it for them if they are not old enough to do it yet themselves) helps them determine their own portion control as well and to take just what they think they might eat. Since my second child was born, I have pretty much always made one meal for all of us and that's what everyone eats. Getting my kids in the kitchen and helping with preparation makes a big difference for us. My 13 year old now makes dinner on her own sometimes for us. It is a real treat!

Since you mention your son is on the autism spectrum, you may want to check out some books that address food sensitivities and textural issues. A couple that come to mind that I know are:
"The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook, Updated and Revised: The Ultimate Guide to the Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Diet" (this one is more geared towards using diet to treat ADHD or Austism but it also has a lot of other good info. about nutrition for kids in general). Another newer book that approaches feeding from a sociological standpoint as much as a nutritional side is "It's Not About the Broccoli: Three Habits to Teach Your Kids for a Lifetime of Healthy Eating". Good luck!

My boys are 11 and 9 and they are both very adventurous eaters. One of them has always been easy going in that department and the other one was super picky when he was younger. Basically, I always cooked my regular, healthy food and never gave in to making them separate food, but I always made sure that there is at least one item that he likes and can fill up with. Sometimes he would eat around the veggies and just eat the pasta, sometimes he would only eat the tomatoes and some fruit and sometime he would eat a bit of everything.
We also cook together sometimes and that helps a lot too. For example, I taught him how to make salad dressing and ever since then he likes salad. We also talk a lot about healthy food and now he even comes up to us himself and tells me "that he should eat some healthy stuff". I also take him to the store sometimes and he can choose vegetables or other items that he would like to try. That works really well too.

At his age, there's no need to cook separate meals (there isn't even for babies, but it took me 4 kids to figure that one out so don't beat yourself up over that LOL). Just serve him what you and your husband are eating and be nonchalant about it. If you're having something with strong sauces or seasonings then leave his unseasoned, or if you're making something like a stir fry then serve his meat, veggie and rice separately and let him mix together if he wants to. My kids can have a preference of sauce or not on pasta with meatballs, on peppers and onions or not in a fajita, etc. but at the end of the day, with small variations, dinner is dinner. It might take your son a while to come around - food changes can take many, many trials before they take - but he'll get there eventually if you stop making the convenience foods an option. And be matter of fact with changes - "we don't have fish sticks today, we're having cod with buttered breadcrumbs though, isn't this delicious!"

FWIW, my two kids with ADHD, learning and behavioral issues are the ones who are poorer eaters. My oldest son (almost 16) does eat but from a nutritional standpoint, other than dinner he's basically starving himself of good nutrition all day long and loading up on quick things like granola bars, juice boxes and bread, without enough veggies, protein, or good fats. It definitely affects his learning, skin, hair, and pallor - he looks sickly, is super-model skinny (not a great look for a teenage boy) and can't focus. I really wish that I had gotten his nutrition - or lack thereof - more under control when he was younger. Contrast that with my youngest son (8), who eats an almost ideal diet all day long - things like eggs with peppers and onions or a smoothie with spinach and avocado for breakfast, tuna or a salad with grilled chicken for lunch, almonds, yogurt or hummus for snacks, a balanced dinner, etc. This is the kid who orders a salad at Wendy's and snacks on clam chowder. He has such energy and vitality and a pleasant disposition from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed, and I think part of that is that he just feels good. He's the one who went from breast milk to table food. I really wish I had figured that out with the other kids.

Anyway...young kids CAN enjoy a more sophisticated variety of foods than typical kiddie stuff. Just make the changes gradual (say, one meal the first week, 2 meals the second week) and in a few months, you should be rid of most of the junk. We do have convenience foods sometimes - pizza on Fridays, or fish sticks once a month or so - but the bulk of what's for dinner is real food. You'll get there!

We just always fed our son what we were having--no special meals, etc.
He'll soon be 11.
I think I could only list 2 things he WON'T eat.
Just serve what you make!
Good luck!