How to get your picky kids to eat anything
Blogger Emily Leary shares her plan to beat fussy eating. LISA SALMON reports
THERE’S little more disheartening than your child refusing to eat a meal you’ve spent ages preparing. And when the meal refusals happen repeatedly, many desperate parents fall into the trap of only serving food they know their child will eat – which is most likely to feature unhealthy kiddie-favourites like pizza and burgers.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Emily Leary, a mother of two who runs the popular parenting and food blog A Mummy Too.
“Most of us have witnessed the list of things our child will eat getting shorter and shorter and felt powerless to do anything about it,” she says.
“The trap we busy parents tend to fall into is serving the things we’re sure our kids will eat time and time again. That can be very practical – no-one likes to see their carefully cooked meals rejected by the kids – but it can lead to a very narrow view of what children think of as normal. And then anything unfamiliar is viewed with suspicion.”
Emily, whose A Mummy Too blog has 300,000 followers and has won several best
food blog awards, has written a new book Get Your Kids to Eat Anything (published by Mitchell Beazley, £16.99).
Emily says the core aim of her book is to turn the idea of normal food on its head: “To gradually introduce variety and to keep that going until the experience of discovering new flavours, textures, smells, shapes and colours on the plate is the new normal.”
And the way to introduce that new normal, she explains, is through these five phases.
1. PUT THE UNFAMILIAR INTO THE FAMILIAR
START to gently encourage variety at mealtimes by introducing small elements of unfamiliar colour, flavour or texture to trusted favourites. Change them just enough to begin to break some early assumptions about what food should be like, and to get all children excited. “You might try taking some family favourites and adding a twist,” says Emily.
“For example, by adding red lentils to spaghetti bolognese, or curry powder to the crumb on your fish and chips.”
2. EDUCATE
IF you’ve ever begged your child to eat
their vegetables, you will almost certainly have had your pleas met with questions like ‘Why do we have to eat healthily?’
As much as we might want to shut down the dreaded ‘whys’, if we really want children to buy into the journey towards healthy, varied eating, education is key.
Emily says: “We don’t want to force healthy eating upon our children only for them to rebel. Rather, we want to equip them with the skills and desire to make healthy choices for a lifetime.”
Parents might try helping children grow their own herbs to help illustrate where food comes from, then get them involved in cooking a meal using those herbs.
Or take on the challenge to build a plate based on the main food groups. Emily says this phase is all about assisting your children’s explorations in texture, taste and smell, so keep the conversation open and encourage questions.
3. DISCOVER THE FUN IN FOOD
“AS we work continually towards serving up varied, interesting meals, it’s time to turn our focus to putting the enjoyment into food,” says Emily.
“We can overcome visual resistance to certain foods and build a new level of enthusiasm for variety by introducing visually exciting meals. You might try serving up arty plates such as fruity flowers adorning a pancake, or add unexpected colour to a meal with bright red beetroot risotto.”
She says parents should think about the recipes they know well, and think creatively about how they might tweak them to make them