Monday, April 6, 2009

When your child doesn't like a certain food...

... maybe you need to consider the way that food is prepared.

For example, one of my kids does not like cheese much, especially if it is melted (with the exception of pizza. lol!). He will have cheddar cheese cubes every now and then, but overall, he's not a cheese lover (I don't know what happened...)

At one point, my kids would eat frozen mixed veggies, but not cooked (thanks to the Meal Makeover Moms for that tip).

When we met, my husband said he didn't like green beans. But every time we served it, he would eat it, and like it. It was probably the way it had been prepared that made a difference. (Although, sadly, I can't convince him otherwise about beets)

I recall hating milk as a child. Now that I'm older, I realize that I didn't like it warm (unless it was flavored). Although I am not an avid milk drinker now, I don't have trouble drinking cold milk (actually there is a study that specified how cold milk should be to be more palatable). And I have always preferred cheese and yogurt, so I didn't really need to be drinking milk anyway.

So if you have young children who aren't fond of a food, make sure you give them a variety of other foods and even change the way they are prepared or bought (fresh vs. frozen vs canned). Don't assume that they know how to ask you to prepare things differently if they haven't been exposed to different preparations. And don't get caught up micromanaging their food intake. That may work well for nutrition research, but it is quite unnecessary for normal living.

3 comments:

  1. What if they don't like sweets...should I make it a different way to teach them to enjoy it. LOL! Faith with always prefer fruits over sweets any day. She actually was more excited over naval oranges than her very own birthday cake. What family did she come from!

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  2. LOL!

    Nicole that is too funny!

    I say you forcefeed the cake! ;-)

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  3. Great post, although I'm very sad to learn that one of your kids doesn't like cheese. It's my all-time favorite food and I can't imagine life without it.

    Max cracks me up when he tells me he hates tomatoes, raw or cooked. But I figured out he'll eat homestyle spaghetti sauce and chunky salsa, too. Oh how I love pointing that irony out to him!

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