Guest Post: How to Get Kids Excited About Local Food

Have a bunch of little reluctant eaters in your life? Today’s guest post is written by Jenna over at Food With Kid Appeal. Kid Appeal is helping parents introduce healthier foods into kid’s diets. Her philosophy is that good food is tasty, and she has loads of suggestions on how to get kids to taste and eat nutritious foods. Follow her blog to see what she’s feeding her family and what her wee taste-testers think of her concoctions.

So you want to start buying local food, but you don’t think it will go over with the kids. It can! Try some of these techniques when it comes to trying the things you snagged at the market.

1. Reward even the smallest steps. If your child picks up a new ingredient, smells it, licks it, puts it in mouth and spits it out, praise him!! Talk about what’s happening. “Hey, you smelled the asparagus, what do you think?”, or “your face tells me something is going on in your mouth, what did that taste like?”

2. Acknowledge their concern. Try to figure out what the concern is, and help them verbalize it. “That asparagus has been sitting on your plate all night and you haven’t tried it. What’s up?” Kid’s will sometimes fixate on something that seems irrational to parents, but is completely real to them. One night my son protested when I served fried rice with meat and veggies. There was nothing unfamiliar about the meal ingredients except the fact that it was all in one bowl. Did I say protested? I mean broke down in inconsolable tears. I responded with something like “you sound really upset about something, what’s up” and he said he wanted there to be food in lots of dishes instead of in one big bowl. I acknowledged his concern “so you’d prefer if all the ingredients were in separate dishes?” He responded yes. My response was “mama wanted to try something new, want to be brave with me and try it? Let’s see what this broccoli tastes like.” Then to address his concern I followed up with “Let’s make a plan to have a meal with all the ingredients in separate dishes another night this week. What would you like the veggie dish to be?

3. Save the best for last. Holding off on what food item/drink they really want can be a motivator. If you know your kids will go for a certain dish at dinner, give a small serving and offer more when he’s tried a bite or two of the new food.

4. Show by example. Eat asparagus with him. Exclaim how tasty they are. Deliberately pick something out you’ve never tried either. Do a family taste test. Find out what’s healthy in the new item and tell him why his body needs that to grow. Make it relevant to his life. Whfoods.org is a good place to get nutrition science info to share with your family.

5. Show enthusiasm. Introduce silliness into your meal times. Make it fun. I’ve been know to sing the “Apatosaurus” song when I serve broccoli and the boys aren’t eating it. I make up my own words about the dinosaur eating broccoli leaves, using his big grinding teeth to chew them up, and follow then words that follow broccoli all the way through the dino’s digestive system. They love it.

6. Circle back. Even if just one bite of asparagus was eaten, reward them when you can. Next time he does something energetic, tell him he was able to jump, throw, run, kick so well because of that healthy energy food (s)he ate at dinner.

Thanks to Jenna for her contribution! If you enjoyed that post, go check out her blog, or her recent post: Top 10 Ways to Broaden Your Kids Palette.