Playing with food is usually not considered a good thing but I think it can be, especially for babies and toddlers that are resistant to trying new foods. It is natural for little ones to be cautious of new things – especially new food. When we let them explore food with all their senses it gives them an opportunity to “get to know” their food and become comfortable with it. It’s natural for them to explore new foods with their eyes, ears, nose and hands before trying a bite. Keep in mind they might spit it out and that is okay too. Training taste buds takes time. The goal is for your child to develop positive feelings and connections with their food.

Of course I’m not suggesting we encourage messy food fights, there is definitely a need for learning table manners as well, I think that food play can be a healthy and normal process of accepting new foods. Perhaps allowing this process to happen might even help prevent some of the picky eating issues that come up as toddlers become preschoolers.

When my daughter was a baby I’d often let her play with food (when we didn’t have a busy day) she would sit in her high chair and have a great time exploring her food. She especially loved avocados, feeling the bumpy texture of the skin with her little fingers, bringing it to her nose to smell it, smearing it around her tray like a painting, it usually ended up all over her face and hands but she loved every minute of it! As much as possible we encouraged her to feed herself so that she would get to explore get to know her food…is was a messy fun filled experience!

For older children it can still be fun to incorporate some fun and play into their food. They can make faces with the food on their plate, use fun cutlery or dishes; perhaps their fruit is served on a popsicle stick there are plenty of ways to make healthy food fun. We want our kids to enjoy healthy food and letting them have a little fun with it once it while really helps. So often “fun food” is synonymous with junk food and it doesn’t have to be that way!

My advice to parents is to let food be an enjoyable learning experience!

• Let your babies explore their food and engage their five senses!
• Give your kids the chance to decide how they want to try a food. If your toddler wants to put together strange combinations of food, let them, they might just come up with something they love!
• Show your kids that healthy foods can be fun and that it’s okay to use their imaginations to come up with cool ways to serve their food.

Having a little fun at mealtimes is a secret to successful food acceptance and to helping your kids develop a positive relationship with healthy food that will last a lifetime. That is one of the best gifts you can give your kids.

What was the first food your little one explored?

Why should your kids be eating a rainbow every day? Each color group provides a unique set of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. When kids eat from the 5 color groups it becomes an easy and fun way to ensure that they are benefitting from this wide spectrum of nutrients.

By breaking produce down into groups of fire-engine red, bright orange, sunshine yellow, emerald green and rich blue/purples you can make eating fruits and vegetables fun for your kids and we all know that kids love to have fun!

So how do you get your kids to eat a rainbow? As parents, we need to get into the habit of serving fruits and veggies at every meal and snack! If you do the typical 3 meals and 2 snacks per day then you have five opportunities a day to get your kids eating colorful fruits and vegetables! I encourage you to make this fun and keep it light, no pressure and no battles. If your child starts off by eating just one color a day that is a great start…you can build up to a rainbow over time. Healthy bodies are made one bite at a time so celebrate every step towards the rainbow!

Breakfast: This is an important meal and one where you can easily add fruit or veggies. If your family eats dairy and your kids like to dip their fruit, Greek yogurt works well! Sometimes I’ll incorporate the fruit into the meal, such as a bowl of yogurt, granola and apple chunks. Or I’ll add a handful of Raisins to a bowl of oatmeal. Other mornings we’ll make a colorful fruit smoothie! If your family eats eggs you can easily add some baby spinach or other veggies such as chopped up peppers or green onions to accentuate this meal.

Snack: Veggie Time! Try offering veggies in different ways such as sliced, cubed, grated, changing the appearance and texture of veggies can work magic for picky eaters. We also like to serve snacks on a cute plate or in a muffin tray to make it a little more interesting!

Lunch: Sandwiches are a great way to add veggies to a meal! Sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, leafy lettuce, avocado all work well in a sandwich. If you’re not having sandwiches, make sure there is a plate of veggies for your kids. By keeping track of the colors eaten at breakfast and snack time, we then offer a color or two that hasn’t been eaten yet to make sure we reach our goal of five colors.

Snack: Fruit Time! Do yourself a favor and keep snacks simple, for example a little bowl of frozen blueberries is a tasty treat that doesn’t take more than a few seconds to prepare. Start thinking of snack time as fruit/vegetable time, in our house if you want a snack it’s automatically only a fruit or vegetable. If you don’t do snacks at your house then it’s extra important that you serve at least one produce item at each meal, ideally two, so that your children will reach the goal of five colors a day.

Dinner: We always have a vegetable with dinner! Whether it’s a salad, roasted veggies, raw veggie slices, it’s important to get into the habit of always including a veggie! We also try to include veggies in our main dish; for example we add things like zucchini, carrots, and tomatoes to spaghetti sauce. At this point in the day be sure to think about what colors still need to be eaten…then serve a vegetable that belongs to the color group that is needed.

Dessert: Fruit again! If we re-think what “dessert” is, we see that it can actually be a fantastic time to get in another serving of fruit! Fresh fruit over a scoop of frozen yogurt, apple slices with a sprinkle of cinnamon, frozen bananas made into ice cream…the possibilities are endless.

When it comes down to it what we eat and serve our families is all about habit and those habits can be healthy or unhealthy ones, you get to decide. Once you get yourself into the habit of serving a fruit and/or vegetable at every meal, it will become a natural part of your meal planning. Just remind yourself that your kids need FIVE to THRIVE!

How many colorful fruits and veggies do you and your kids eat a day?

When you think of a summer time fruit, watermelon is on the top of the list for most of us and for good reason! They are juicy, crunchy and colorful. Watermelon has a very high water content amount, approximately 92%, which is why it’s the perfect food to cool you down on a hot summer day.

Watermelons are an excellent source of several vitamins: vitamin A, which helps maintain eye health, vitamin C, which helps strengthen your immune system and vitamin B6, which helps convert protein to energy.

For a recent family birthday we made a watermelon cake, it took very little time to put together, it was healthy and it was a big hit! There are many different ways to make a watermelon cake, since time wasn’t on my side I went with a quick version. I just sliced up the watermelon into triangles and stacked them into a circular shape. Then I used a mini cookie cutter to make some flower shapes and a melon baller for decorate the top and voila it was finished!

Here are some tips for purchasing watermelon.

• Select a watermelon that seems very heavy for its size. Heaviness in a watermelon is a good thing because the water content of a watermelon will generally increase with ripening. So a heavy watermelon usually means it’s ripe!
• The underbelly of a watermelon should be a creamy yellow color; this is the spot where it has rested on the ground. If it’s still green it’s probably not ripe enough.
• I find that if you hold the watermelon in one hand and tap the top with your thumb, if you hear a hollow sound and feel the tap right away with your bottom hand then it will usually mean a fully ripened watermelon. But this isn’t an exact science 

Once you bring home your watermelon be sure to wash it before cutting it. You never know how many hands have touched that watermelon and what sprays it might have on it so give it a good rinse! You don’t want to cut through and spread any germs or chemicals to the fleshy part that you eat

Here is a great method from Super Healthy Kids on how to easily cut a water melon http://www.superhealthykids.com/healthy-kids-recipes/the-best-way-to-cut-a-watermelon.php

Any way you slice it, eating watermelon is a perfect snack during the summer, it’s healthy, juicy, crunchy and oh so good!

Do you have a favorite tip for selecting or cutting watermelon?

Before we actually take a bite of food we start eating…with our eyes! They tell our brain what it will taste like via a whole series of learned and natural responses and we taste what we think we should. A study in the late 1970’s showed that, when we find food more appealing, not only do we enjoy it more we also absorb more nutrients from it. As parents we can take that information and use it to make healthy food look more appealing and interesting. The best part is that it only takes a little extra time and effort to present our kids with healthy food that looks fun to eat. I’m not suggesting you need to be an artist although there are some amazing artists that turn food into master pieces. All you need is a little creativity, some kitchen tools or just few extra minutes.

It’s actually a lot easier that it might seem. Use cute dishes, muffin tins, ice trays, bento lunchboxes and mini cookie cutters to create visually appealing lunches and snacks. Listen, the marketing that goes into junk food doesn’t happen by chance so why not do a little marketing yourself to promote the healthy foods your kids should be eating!

As a quick example have a look at this simple snack I put together the other day. You could just toss some veggies on a plate for your child or you could spend literally an extra minute arranging them in a cute dish. My daughter Hannah loved it! Which one would you be drawn to?

Since we eat with our eyes we are also very drawn to color so use this to your advantage and serve your kids at least two colors in their meals and snack. If you can get five colors of the food rainbow into a snack or meal even better!

Using things like muffin tins or ice trays turns snack time into a fun treat while offering a wide selection of healthy food for your child to nibble on.

The extra effort you put in to presenting food in a visually appealing way will be worth it and you might just win over a picky eater and find them munching on a veggie or two.

Do you use creativity when feeding your kids? Share your favorite suggestion!

Feeding a picky eater can be one of the most stressful things a parent has to do. It’s frustrating, worrisome, stressful, annoying, disappointing and downright exasperating at times. It can be really easy to just throw your hands in the air and give up trying to get your picky eater to eat new or healthy foods. After serving something three or four times and having your child refuse to even give it one nibble it might feel like you’ve given it your best shot and it’s time to move on.

But did you know that it can take at least 10 exposures to a new food before it is accepted? That number grows for very picky eaters so the message I want to share with you is not to give up too soon! It’s also important to note that I said exposures, which doesn’t necessarily mean bites of food are even eaten. An exposure might be touching the food, smelling it, licking it. Interacting with new or non preferred foods is building helpful steps towards eating them. Slow and steady is the key when you are training taste buds. I speak from experience; it took me two years to learn to like peppers.

Getting back to the 10 exposures, it is very easy for the 6th or 7th time to feel like a million when you are trying to get your child to try a new food, so it’s really important that you actually keep track of how many times you have offered a new food. Relying on your memory isn’t usually effective for us busy parents! That is why we created a free Today I Tried chart to provide you with a visual tool when it comes to helping your picky eater expand their food choices.

This chart is really easy to use, just choose the new foods you’d like your child to keep trying and write them on the left hand side. Each time your child tries that food they can write a check mark or draw a happy face in that box. If at the end of 10 exposures your child is still not able to eat the new food, take it off the menu temporarily and try something else for a while. Don’t make a big deal about it simply say that you will try again when they are a bit older. This way you can feel good knowing that you and your child both tried your best and that it’s okay to move on.

Keep in mind when you are working on a certain food to serve it in different ways because sometimes changing the texture can make a big difference for picky eaters. Take carrots for example, you can serve them grated thinly in a salad, as a soup, roasted, steamed or even in a fresh juice!

Be sure to celebrate your child’s willingness to keep trying – even if it’s just giving a cucumber a kiss! All those baby steps lead to big changes one day as long as you keep trying!

What is your best tip for feeding a picky eater?

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be expensive, the truth is it can actually save you money! There are lots of ways to enjoy the benefits of healthy foods and still stick to a budget. Here are some ideas to keep your costs down while making healthy food choices:

1. Do your grocery shopping once a week. Every time we go to the store for just one or two items we usually end up walking out with a cart full! By going only once a week, you eliminate the possibility of spending more money!

2. Plan Plan Plan! Come up with some meal and snack ideas for the week. Make a shopping list based on those meals and then stick to the list! Don’t be tempted by impulse items once you are in the store. Having a list and buying just the items on it will help a lot.

3. Make meatless meals one day a week. On those days you can easily get your protein from beans, nuts, seeds and grains.

4. Make meals at home. Cooking at home can be much healthier and cheaper than eating out. You are in control of the ingredients (like salt and sugar amounts) and you’ll probably end up with leftovers for another meal! Getting the whole family involved with preparing a meal whenever possible is also a great way to spend some time together!

5. Try growing a garden. You don’t necessarily need a big garden space you could start with some planter boxes or even just a small herb box in a windowsill! Your city might have a community garden that you can take part in. Gardening is a really great experience for kids!

6. Famer’s Markets can be a great place to get your Rainbow of produce! You are supporting your local farmers and getting fresh produce that hasn’t had to travel for miles and miles. I’ve heard that if you go to the market towards the end of their day you can sometimes get an even better price because they are very interested in getting rid of their stock…just something to consider!

7. Freeze big quantities of seasonal produce.  In the summer months we buy huge flats of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries then we freeze them and use them in smoothies and other recipes during the winter months. It’s much cheaper to buy produce in season!

8.  Buy Bulk! When shopping for items like flour, spices, pasta and rice can be less expensive if you purchase them from the bulk bins! It’s also better for the environment due to less packaging so it’s a win-win situation.

9. And finally…Never shop on an empty stomach!

Happy Healthy Eating!

We all have busy lives these days and sometimes cooking is just one more thing to get through in the day so the thought of bringing kids into the kitchen to “help” may not seem appealing on first glance.  Cooking with little ones tends to take a little longer and be a little messier so it’s not necessarily practical to have their “help” every day.  However when you aren’t in the middle of a hectic day I would encourage you to invite your kids into the kitchen, no matter their age, I think you’ll find that cooking can be one of the most bonding things you do together!

When my daughter was a baby I’d let her play with food, she would sit in her high chair and have a great time exploring an avocado.  Feeling the bumpy texture of the skin with her little fingers, bringing it to her nose to smell it, smearing it around her tray like a painting, it usually ended up all over her face and in her hair!  As much as possible we encouraged her to feed herself so that she would get to explore and get to know her food…is was a messy fun filled experience!

As a toddler I’d give her “special jobs” like washing vegetables in the sink, she’d pretend they were swimming in a pool, or sometimes she would dry the lettuce for our salad in her merry go round AKA the salad spinner!

Now that she’s older she helps out with every aspect of our family meals.  We plan meals together, she helps write out our shopping list, she gets her own little cart to fill at the store and is our produce picker at the farmers market.  After years of “playing” in the kitchen she is now quite comfortable in the kitchen and is has great knife skills. We made a casserole the other night and I didn’t have to chop a single vegetable :)

My advice to parents is to let food be a fun hands on learning experience!

• Let your babies play with their food!  Watch them explore their food and engage their 5 senses!
• When time permits, take your children grocery shopping, let them help you pick out a rainbow of fruits and veggies!
• Trust them with tasks in the kitchen – it’s the only way they’ll learn and gain skills.  Get them washing the produce, ripping lettuce, cutting soft things with plastic knives and working their way up to using a real knife, setting the table, and doing other jobs that help boost their confidence in the kitchen!

There are so many learning opportunities in the kitchen: math, physics, geography, reading and science to name a few! Cooking with your kids, when you have time and are not rushed, is a fantastic way to spend time together, pass on family recipes or create some new ones together!

I think it’s important that we engage our children in the entire process of their food.  Learning where it comes from and how it grows.  Helping to select, prepare and cook it. This gives parents the opportunity to have great chats about why we choose healthy foods for our bodies and how the choices we make effect us and the whole planet!

As parents there are so many things we want to pass on to our children.  Being a picky eater is definitely NOT one of those things.

So what happens if you want your kids to be healthy eaters and YOU are a picky eater??? It’s not an easy challenge to lead by example when you have a hard time with healthy eating yourself however it’s also not mission impossible! How do I know this is true?  Because I am still on that path myself and working on becoming a more adventurous eater! I think you would be surprised to learn that there are a lot of picky adults out there, so if you are one, don’t worry you’re not alone and there’s hope!! There are things you can do to get your kids on a path of healthy eating while taking that same journey yourself.

Get Rid of Guilt and Keep Trying

It’s so hard to “know” that you need to be setting a good example for your children but at the same time you can barely choke down a Brussels Sprout! The thing about guilt is that it is pointless and just keeps you feeling stuck.  Your kids are not doomed and neither are you…it’s never too late!  Take small steps everyday towards healthy eating, these things add up and turn into a good habit!  It takes time and many exposures for your taste buds to get used to something new.  It took me two years to finally enjoy red peppers!  I started off cutting them up extremely small (about the size of an eraser on a pencil) and would mix them in with food I enjoyed such as pasta sauce and on homemade pizzas.  Pairing new foods with old favorites is a great way to train taste buds!  Eventually the pepper pieces got bigger and bigger and now I wouldn’t think of picking them out of anything I eat!  We can work on our own eating habits at the same time as our children…turn it into a fun adventure together. So don’t waste any time feeling bad and just starting taking those baby steps with your child!

Watch Your Words and Keep Trying

Try to avoid saying strong statements such as ” I HATE broccoli” or “I don’t eat ANYTHING green” when you are eating with your kids because you don’t want to have them attach those feelings to the foods they are suppose to be eating.  The way we talk about food, especially around our kids does affect them, so instead you can try using phrases like “Broccoli isn’t my favorite but I’m going to give it another try” or ” I’m not used to the taste of spinach yet but I’m working on it!” You don’t have to like and pretend you love something when your kids can clearly see you barely choking it down.  When my daughter was younger she would say “My tongue isn’t friends with that yet” so we would keep introducing whatever it was that she didn’t like and most of the time they eventually ended up becoming friends! I think it’s good to let your kids know that everyone has likes and dislikes and that’s okay as long as we can keep an open mind and keep trying!

Get Creative and Keep Trying

Sometimes we get stuck in a food rut and forget that things can be prepared and served in many different ways! Since texture sensitivities can play a big role in picky eating it’s really important to try mixing things up to find what works best for you and for your kids.  You might find that kale is too strong raw but turning it into kale chips and voila you can eat a whole bowl in one sitting!  Personally I don’t enjoy the texture of raw blueberries but I love them when they are frozen. I think a lot of us experienced vegetables as over cooked mushy things that we had to eat as kids and that left a bad taste in our mouths so to speak!  But you can do so many things with vegetables and prepare them is so many different ways that if you are willing to explore you will find a combination that works for you and for your kids.  It might not be the same but that’s okay too.  My husband prefers broccoli raw and I prefer it steamed so when we have broccoli at our house we just leave some uncooked…no big deal!!  Buy some produce and see how many different ways you can prepare it…then set up a taste testing station at the table and give each a try…it will be fun for your kids and a great way to see what everyone prefers!

The best advice I can give is to keep trying new foods! It can take at least 15 exposures before a new food is accepted so if you don’t like something the first time keep trying it at least 14 more times! I believe we can turn any problem into a positive and picky eating is no exception. I can’t think of a better motivator to break out of the picky zone than wanting to set a healthy example for our little ones. Being a picky parent just means we have to work a little harder at it!

One of the most important roles of parenting is feeding your child and setting them up with healthy eating habits.  You are your child’s first and most important role model, especially when it comes to eating.  They are relying on you to teach them about the food they eat.

Humans aren’t the only parents with this important task! Animals also teach their young about food…they must show them the right foods to eat and which poisonous foods to avoid. They do this by role modeling to their young what foods are safe to eat and where to find them.  In the wild it’s crucial young animals learn the difference; it’s a matter of life or death. The young watch their parents over and over again and eventually learn how to find the right foods to eat for themselves.  Ultimately this is what we would all like for our children — to learn what foods are right for their bodies in order to be healthy and which foods to avoid.

However unlike animals we human parents tend to also pass down our not so healthy eating habits as well.  I find it interesting how we sometimes teach our children to eat foods our bodies don’t consider safe to eat.  Our bodies don’t know what to do with these highly processed “foods” and our children end up facing many health issues such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.

I’m not suggesting we strive for perfection when it comes to healthy eating!  I think we need to focus on setting the habit of eating whole foods on a daily basis so our children (like the animal young) see us eating the right foods day after day.

Your children are watching you…it really doesn’t work to follow the do as I say and not as I do rule!  They will do as you do – if you eat junk food they probably will too!  On the flip side if they see you enjoying healthy food every day – they probably will too! This means sometimes we parents have to put on a brave face and eat things we might normally not enjoy…in my case (a recovering picky eater) it is not always easy to do! I’ve forcefully smiled my way through many a mouthful when eating with my daughter. She has no idea how much I dislike asparagus!

Do you have any stories of overcoming your own food dislikes in order to set a good example for your children?

Kids love rainbows! What’s not to like, they’re so bright and colourful! Did you know you can take their love of rainbows and put it on a plate filled with fruits and vegetables?! Using a rainbow as a guide you can ensure your children benefit from a wide range of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients in their diet.

Phytonutrients are natural chemical compounds found in all plants; they protect against disease and promote health in plants and humans. They also give fruits and vegetables their colour. No single fruit or vegetable provides all of the nutrients kids need to be healthy. Eating a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables everyday is the key!

By breaking produce down into colour groups of fire-engine red, vibrant orange, sunny yellow, rich green, and deep purples you can make eating fruits and vegetables fun for your kids!  Even at a very young age kids can easily grasp the concept of eating a rainbow.

Here are some examples from each colour group:

• Red Apples, cherries, peppers, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes
• Orange Apricots, cantaloupe, carrots, mangoes, oranges, sweet potatoes
• Yellow Bananas, peppers, pineapple, corn, grapefruit, squash
• Green Broccoli, cucumbers, grapes, peas, spinach, kiwi
• Purple Beets, blackberries, blueberries, red cabbage, eggplants, plums

As parents we “know” our children should be eating a minimum of 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but this knowledge doesn’t seem to be making its way into their diets!

Here are 5 tips to encourage your kids to eat more fruits and vegetables:

1. Keep Fruits and Vegetables in Sight: Stock your fridge full of washed and ready to eat fruits and veggies.

2. Remove the Competition: If you have unhealthy food options like sweets, chips and other junk food around they will usually be chosen over fruits and veggies! Stick with healthy foods in your kitchen.

3. Prepare Meals Together: Start bringing kids into the kitchen at a young age. Toddlers can wash and rip lettuce, preschoolers can measure and stir, and older kids can find recipes and help create meals. Children are far more likely to dig into a new dish if they helped prepare it!

4. Keep it Simple: Veggies taste best when you don’t do too much to them.  Eating them raw seems to be a favorite with kids.  Add some yummy dip and you’re done!

5. Keep trying: Kids need to be exposed to, and ideally taste, a new food as many as 10 to 15 times before they’ll accept it.  Just getting them to take one bite is a victory!

Do your kids eat five colourful fruits and vegetables every day?