Trying New Foods
Join us on our journey to become a little more adventurous when it comes to eating. Trying new foods expands palates, introduces different cultures through cuisine, and provides opportunity for language development.
How new foods can promote language use:
- Provides opportunity to expand vocabulary
- Provides opportunity to make a choice
- Provides opportunity to place an order
- Provides opportunity to describe what the new food looks like
- Provides opportunity to describe how the new food smells, feels, and tastes
Why it’s important to expose children to new food:
- If you want your child to eat differently you have to feed her differently
- Children establish food preferences and dietary habits during the first six years of life
- Positive exposure to multiple foods help children develop a taste for more foods
- Consistently offering a variety of foods to children helps the majority of children overcome the natural tendency to reject new foods and leads to more healthful eating habits
- Up to 10 to 15 experiences may be necessary for a child to try and then accept a new food
Ways to expose your child to new foods:
- Pick out a new fruit or vegetable from the local farmers marker and give it a taste
- Try a new ethnic restaurant. Think Indian, Somali, Mexican, Chinese. The options are endless!
- Pick a new recipe and cook it up together
- Pick a restaurant that doesn’t have a kids menu, and share a new dish
- Are you growing a vegetable garden? Pick your veggies straight from the garden and give it a taste
