French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Billon (classic english novels txt) 📕

of cuisine as a family? Mildly spiced Indian food, Chinese food, and Thai food are usual kid favorites.

• Introduce variations on your children’s favorite dishes. Try pasta with olive oil one time, canola oil the next, and butter the next. Or try store-bought grated cheese, then grate your own Parmesan with your child. Sprinkle a bit of parsley on cooked carrots one night, and a bit of dill the next. The options are endless, and all of them help teach your children that variety is okay.

• Don’t disguise or hide variety: make “healthy” foods obvious and appealing. Try making little “happy face” plates (I often do this with two tomatoes for eyes, half a grape for a nose, an apple slice for the mouth, grated carrots for the hair) to serve at the start of a meal.

• What do you do if your child resists variety on the plate (e.g. if he or she is fussy about multiple foods, or about foods touching)? Encourage your child, gently, to grow out of this habit. Try combining two ingredients they like. Or let them do it themselves, using this method: at a moment when your child is calm and ready to eat (hungry, but not too hungry), place two complementary foods in two separate bowls in front of them (e.g. yogurt and jam, or pasta and cheese). Give them a third, empty bowl, and encourage them to mix the ingredients themselves. You might want to model the same mixing exercise yourself with your own bowls and see if they follow your lead.

French Food Rule #6:

For picky eaters: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it.

For fussy eaters: You don’t have to like it, but you do have to eat it.

A lot of parenting advice in North America sets up a division of labor between parents and kids. According to this view, parents decide when to eat and what is served; kids decide whether and how much to eat. The French view on this would be mildly skeptical. Their view (and one that is backed up by scientific research) is that children need to be firmly encouraged to try new things. Most children have to taste (rather than simply see) new foods to begin liking them. Research shows that it will take them up to a dozen or more tastes before they consent to eat something new. This is normal: don’t rush to make assumptions about your child’s food preferences after only a few tries. Many parents often give up after only a few attempts. And don’t be surprised if children “like” something one day but then refuse it the next. It’s all part of the learning process.

Rule #6 Tips for Trying New Foods

The goal is for your children to be curious and comfortable with trying new foods, and to be able to politely decline eating them. Staying calm around new foods is a skill they should be learning, as well as the ability to experiment with tasting and eventually eating them.

• Start early. Many babies and toddlers are very open to new tastes. Take advantage of this, before neophobia (fear of new foods) sets in at age two or three.

• Children shouldn’t be forced to eat (or, even worse, to clean their plates) but simply to taste the things that are served.

• “Taste this, you’ll like it” works better than “Eat this, it’s good for you.”

• If your children don’t like something, encourage them to believe that they eventually will. “Oh, you don’t like it?” I’ll say to my children. “That’s okay. You just haven’t tasted it enough times yet. You’ll like it when you grow up.”

• Don’t serve the new food in isolation. Serve it as part of an enjoyable meal. Make sure there is at least one thing that your child likes on the table.

• When encouraging children to try new foods, serve small portions of new things. This may work better than larger portions.

• Don’t offer new foods unless you are in a sufficiently relaxed mood, and sufficiently attentive and available, to make the experience pleasant for both you and your child.

• Try simple textures. We often introduce new foods in purees or soups, even for our older daughter. Children get used to the taste and can then move on to the “real” texture of the food.

• Some children truly have more sensitive taste buds. Be patient with your child’s progress; it may take over a dozen tastes before a child will eat something new.

• Try an indirect, low-pressure way of offering a new food. Place a little plate with a small portion of the new food on the table, near but not directly in front of your child. Taste a piece or two, with clear enjoyment. Then leave it. Chances are, your child will pick up a piece and try it. If not, remove anything your child has not eaten after a short while, without a fuss. Above all, don’t substitute with anything else.

• When trying to introduce a new food to toddlers, don’t present new foods in too many different ways. Finding the right balance between novelty and familiarity will reassure your toddler. For example, if you have successfully introduced a new food, serve it the same way once or twice more. But then try serving it a different way, so that you don’t get “stuck” with only one rigid recipe.

French Food Rule #7:

Limit snacks, ideally one per day (two maximum), and not within one hour of meals.

In between meals, it’s okay to feel hungry.

At meals, eat until you’re satisfied rather than full.

One of the food rules that the French are most fervent about is the “no snacking” rule. The official French Food Guide advice is that adults should eat three times per day, period. And children should eat four times per day, period. This is how North American children used to eat in the 1970s, when most of today’s parents were born. Today, in contrast, American kids eat nearly