Parents today know how important it is to provide safe, nutritious meals for their kids. Yet most don’t realise that a child’s early months of eating have a lasting influence. The way we typically feed babies a limited assortment of foods actually encourages them to prefer a narrow array of foods when they get older.
When babies are ready to start solids, they are also going through a series of big developmental changes that make them more interested in eating. This is the stage when they begin to put almost anything in their mouths to sample and explore. If you give your baby a food repeatedly, he’ll acquire a taste for it more easily now than at any other time in his life. In fact, his taste buds are setting his food preferences.
However, this phase of adventurous eating is relatively short. By the time your child is a toddler, he’ll probably only be willing to eat foods that he’s already come to trust. In fact, young children can develop an intense fear of new fruits, vegetables and meats, that’s called neophobia.
Unfortunately, many parents only introduce their baby to a limited number of flavours that don’t taste like the real foods they want him to eat later. Stewed apples, for example, don’t taste much like the real thing. When a child who loved baby-food apples tries a fresh one as a toddler, he’ll probably reject it because it tastes foreign. In fact, the whole concept of “baby food” is a myth. As long as you mash or cut the food up into safe-to-eat pieces, there’s no reason why babies should get different fruits and vegetables from the rest of the family.
It’s best to give your baby veggies before starting fruits because once he tastes the sweetness of fruit it may be harder to get him to go back. Start with green veggies, such as peas or green beans, because these are often the toughest flavours for baby to learn to really enjoy. Your baby may love them right away, especially if you give him veggies you ate during pregnancy and nursing. If he doesn’t seem to like green veggies, you can switch your first focus to sweeter orange veggies, such as carrots or sweet potatoes. You can start cycling through fruits soon after you’ve introduced the green veggies.
When you’re introducing a new food, the magic word is patience. You may have to offer a food to your baby six to ten times before he finally decides that he likes it. Even when they initially reject a flavour, most babies can come to love it.
Take advantage of your baby’s blossoming sense of sight by feeding him one brightly coloured food at each meal, in addition to something green at every lunch and dinner. You might choose red (tomato, red bell pepper, watermelon, strawberry), orange (carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin), yellow (yellow bell pepper, banana), or purple (beets, plums). If your baby becomes accustomed to colour, it’ll be easier to get him to eat a balanced diet as he gets older, and those brown and beige foods like burgers and chips will look boring!
And lastly, learn to relax. Pressuring your child to eat will probably make him less likely to enjoy a particular food and, in the long run, it can lead to overeating by teaching him to ignore his body’s own cues.
