Tips for Picky Eaters

We’ve got two picky (very picky) eating children. Even if they liked everything we made last week, they’re not guaranteed to like it again this week. We always take one to two nights out of the week to try something new with them, and hopefully add more to our repertoire of recipes that they will eat even if they don’t love it.

Cooking for children is one of the most difficult things I’ve done. I cook for a community of almost 200 adults day in and out. Maybe it’s their lack of quickly changing palettes or maybe it’s their ability to constructively criticize and better articulate exactly what they do and don’t like about certain dishes, but they’re easier to please than just two children!

Our son doesn’t like meat unless it’s been ground up. You can have a nice cut of fillet mignon (bought on sale of course!) cooked medium rare, medium, or even well and you’d swear it was killing him to take even a bite. And if there happens to be any “fat” on his cut of meat or he finds a tiny bit on one of his bite size pieces, it becomes the “most disgusting” thing in the word. Even if he was, miraculously, enjoying his steak before finding fat, he immediately quits eating it and will refuse to eat the rest of his steak. To clarify, he classifies anything slightly chewy or tough as fat. So if you happen to miss a small piece of gristle or a vein in the steak, might as well give up.

Now, our daughter is much less picky. She’ll eat anything that she sees us or her brother eating. However, when she sees her brother make a fuss about the fat in his steak or his dislike of the side or dish, she follows suite. “Monkey see, monkey do”, or so the saying goes I suppose.

If you have picky eaters for children, then you probably have experienced similar troubles getting your kids to eat, feel free to leave a funny story about it in the comments!

If your kids are as picky as ours, here’s a few tricks and ideas to hopefully help you find something they like!

1.) Keep your spice additions simple.

Don’t use anything more than just butter or oil and salt and pepper. It’s almost like too many flavors can overwhelm their taste buds. Sure it tastes good to us, but ours work together the way an orchestra plays music and theirs are still figuring out how to even play their instruments properly.

2.) Keep a set schedule.

It sounds weird, but establishing a routine can ensure that your kids are hungry when it comes time to sit down and actually eat a meal. If you don’t let them snack whenever they want, they’ll be hungry and at least more willing to try new things.

3.) If they don’t like cooked vegetables, try them raw and vice-versa!

If your children are as big on texture as our son, the consistency of cooked vegetables may be off-putting to them! The carbohydrates and sugars naturally present in vegetables undergo a few chemical reactions while cooking and can have a drastically different flavor to their young taste buds. Conversely, the same is true. If they don’t like a type of raw vegetable, try sautéing it or quickly steaming or poaching them. Those reactions may work in your favor!

4.) Keep your plate colorful.

As crazy as it sounds, kids don’t usually see eating as an enjoyable activity (most of the time), they’d rather be playing or doing almost anything else that they consider to be fun. Having a vibrant and colorful plate of food will hopefully bring a little bit of excitement to something they have to do.

5.) Include them in cooking (if possible).

Not only is this a great way spend a little extra time bonding with your (older) children, but including them in the process will help them appreciate the final product, their plate. Maybe it’s just a bit of psychology, but our kids are much more likely to eat the meal if they had a small roll in making it.

6.) Gotta keep ‘em separated!

Hey yeah! Like #1, our kids seem to dislike too many flavors coming together at once, and this can happen when your portions start touching, too. Sometimes it’s nearly impossible (I’m looking at all the buttered peas out there), but when possible we find they eat more of their plates when they can easily eat all of one part of their plate before moving onto the next part.

7.) Keep notes!

If you’re just getting started down the path to making healthy homemade meals for your family, it certainly helps to keep notes about what you made, how you made it, and everyones reaction and opinions about the meal. Not only will this help you make the same beloved meals again and again, but it can end up being a treasured family recipe for years to come! It can even help you grocery shopping and budgeting for food expenses!

Do you think we missed anything? Did any of these help you? Let us know!

Stay healthy family!