Parenting is hard! I’ve stacked up a lot of parenting fails over these last 6 years, but one thing I am proud of is my daughter’s relationship with food. As a professional chef, I employed a number of tips and tricks to raising an adventurous eater. I’ve noticed that my chef friends use many of the same tricks with similar success, so I wanted to share them with you. I see so many parents struggle with feeding their picky eaters; making separate meals for them, apologizing for them, buying special stuff for them, asking for a long list of special accommodations when ordering at the restaurant, and worrying if they are getting proper nutrition. I wanted to share what’s worked for us in raising an adventurous good eater.
First, let’s define what a “good eater” is. A “good eater” is someone who eats a wide variety of foods from all the food groups and is willing to try new things. A good eater is not always well mannered at the table (and mine certainly is not). Teaching your child culinary curiosity will not necessarily solve every meal-time power struggle. Just setting expectations here.
Here’s 7 tips and tricks that have worked for my family:
1. Focus On Presentation
As a professional chef, I know that plating and presentation matter. It has been studied and proven that food that looks better is perceived to taste better. I use many of the same techniques that I use to get grown-ups to enjoy my food on my kid. Presentation matters for little eaters just like it does for adults, but their aesthetic preferences are different. Most of all though, they like surprises and to feel like their meal was made with love. Bright colors, fun shapes, different textures, sandwiches wrapped up with a bow, and things that are made to fit tiny hands are all things that can make mealtime fun and exciting.
Shapes
Kids like pancakes in the shape of hearts and sandwiches in the shape of dinosaurs or Christmas trees. It’s silly but little things like this make mealtime a surprise and show them that you are thinking about them.
Crunchies
Crunchies are my secret weapon! Sprinkle some “crunchies” on any meal and my daughter will eat it right up. What are crunchies you ask? As a general rule of thumb, crunchies are crunchy, fatty, and salty. They add seasoning and texture to a dish and they are fun! They tend to last for a long time too so you can make up a decent size batch to have on hand. French’s Fried Onions (Number 1 favorite), bacon bits, toasted and salted minced nuts, buttery seasoned toasted breadcrumbs, parmesan/cheese crisps, even crushed potato chips from the bottom of the bag all make good “crunchies”. Are they healthy? Not really. But if a tablespoon of crunchies gets my kid to eat and enjoy a plate full of real food than it’s well worth it. And if I’m being honest, the grown-ups in the house love crunchies too.
Garnishes
In the commercial kitchen, I have a handful of favorite garnishes that I use to dress up a plate. I use the same things at home. Here’s a list of my favorites:
- Sauces (drizzles, dots, designs, messages). Balsamic reduction, honey, BBQ sauce, ketchup, mustard, sour creme, creme fraiche, etc.
- Radish, watermelon radish, Chioggia beet (the pink and white striped ones), purple carrots, all sliced paper-thin and scattered around the plate
- Flower petals (marigold, calendula, rose, any herbs like rosemary, sage, chive – grow these in your garden and always have them on hand)
- Maldon salt
- Crunchies (see above)
- Seeds like black sesame add color contrast
- Microgreens or sprouts. You can grow microgreens inside in about 10 days. Your kid can help grow these too for added fun.
Little Bites for Little Hands: Canapes
Canapes are fun for everyone which is why they are normally served at weddings and parties accompanied by cocktails and champagne. Canapes are great for kids too because they are perfectly sized for little hands and little stomachs and they are visually appealing. Its sounds fancy, but canapes are also really easy to whip up with anything you have on hand. Here are some ideas for quick and easy kid friendly canapes:
- crackers with cream cheese and smoked salmon, garnished with dill or minced red bell pepper or flower petals
- crackers with goat cheese (Humboldt Fog), fig (or other fruit) and a drizzle of honey
- Mini sandwiches. Make a sandwich on regular sandwich bread, cut off the crust, and cut it into 4 bite-sized squares.
- Antipasto Skewers – Little Bamboo picks with diced cheese, diced cooked meat, and olives (or pickles or sliced deli meat – whatever you have in your fridge).
- Caprese Skewers – Little Bamboo picks with cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and balsamic reduction.
- Pinwheels – roll up a wrap or tortilla with a filling of your choice (hummus and thin-sliced veggies, turkey and cheese, etc) and slice into 1/2 inch slices.
- Fruit slices topped with cheese (halved fig with goat cheese or home-made ricotta and honey/ apple slice topped with cheddar or brie/ etc)
- Cheese and meat rolls. Sliced cheese like provolone, Havarti, or Muenster rolled up with sliced meat like ham, turkey, or prosciutto.
- Deviled Eggs.
Snack Platters
Everyone likes variety and choice, especially kids. At the restaurant, we make a lot of Charcuterie and Cheese Platter. Platters to share with cured meats, cheeses, fresh and dried fruit, nuts, pickled things, and condiments. This is pretty much a standard at home too and it’s easily adaptable to whatever you have on hand.
Snack platters that you make for the whole family to share give your kids choices. Platters let them try little bites of new things without any pressure. They can play around with different flavor combos they make themselves.
No need to shy away from fancy blue cheeses or spicy salami. Put what you like on the platters and as long as you have some variety with fruit and nuts your child will try what they want to and you might be surprised what they like on it.
2. Avoid Sugar for As Long As Possible (Train the Palate)!
Humans are naturally predisposed to like sweetness. Back before refined sugar and processed foods, sweet things were scarce, always edible, and rich in calories and vitamins. Eating too much sugar wasn’t an issue because of scarcity. Today, refined sugar is everywhere. Combine that with the natural preference for sweet things and us parents have to work to get our children to develop a taste for vegetables and protein.
A new eater’s palate is a blank slate. By the time a child starts solid food around 6 months, they are so eager and excited to try something new that they are receptive to whatever you give them. My child’s first foods were rice meal, avocado, and scrambled eggs. For the baby food that I did buy, I started with vegetable-only baby food like peas and brocoli. Over time I added occasional vegetable-fruit mixes. Today there are a lot of good organic options in the store (apple-spinach, beet-blueberry, etc). Eventually, after the age of 2, I started using honey, maple syrup, and dark chocolate in very limited quantities.
I had a strict rule of no sugar at all until my daughter was 2. It drove the grandparents crazy. The first sugary thing my daughter ate was carrot-beet cake on her second birthday. She wasn’t a big fan. She thought it was too sweet.
Now, we can’t shelter our child from sugar forever and there will be time that you send yours out into the world (school). For us, that was at 2 1/2 years old when my daughter started pre-school. At her school, I was surprised to learn that the kids regularly were given candy. I remember when I found out, I felt like it was a violation of her perfect unsullied palate. And my worst fears about sugar were confirmed. For little kids, sugar is a drug and she instantly became a junky and pursued this drug with the single-mindedness and intensity of an addict: sneaking, stealing, and throwing fits. Every holiday she would come home with a big bag of candy and the fighting would start all over again. It was pretty sad, hold off as long as you can.
Around this time she also discovered that there were foods that kids were supposed to like, like hotdogs and mac and cheese. And foods that were icky grown-up foods like vegetables. All of a sudden, she stopped liking things that she previously had loved. She said things like “mushrooms are gross” when we never used the word “gross” in our house.
I’m telling you this sad story because you should know, no matter what you do at home your kids will be exposed to sugar and other unhealthy food habits and they will be influenced by them. It’s not your fault. Kids are extremely easy to influence, especially by their peers. This is why it is so important to start with a good foundation.
3. There’s No Such Thing As “Kid Food” or “Gross Foods”
As a chef, I reject the notion that there are “kid foods”. Good food is good food. By the time my oldest was 2, she had eaten rabbit, duck confit, chicken liver, sushi, all kinds of mushrooms, olives, squid ink risotto, and a wide variety of different vegetables. I think conveying assumptions about what your child will or will not like to them is one of the most sure-fire ways to create a picky eater and we do this inadvertently all the time.
When we went out to restaurants (back before Covid 19) we didn’t order off the Kid’s Menu. We ordered her side dishes like green beans, edamame (aka “hiding beans”) or mashed potatoes, or we got an extra plate and shared whatever she wanted to try from our meals.
I don’t hide the vegetables. I am all for adding nutrition to meals at home by adding vegetables (and other nutrient dense things for that matter) to dishes that may not traditionally call for them, but it doesn’t need to be a secret from the kids. Call zucchini bread, “zucchini bread.” When we hide vegetables children aren’t learning how good vegetables can be, and all the different ways vegetables can be used. We are making the assumption that they won’t like vegetables to begin with.
Kid’s are not naturally opposed to strong flavors. My daughter has always loved olives, capers, and briny-salty things. I had to put our Maldon Salt on a high shelf because she would eat it straight out of the container in large amounts. She eats goat cheese, blue cheese, sardines, and mustard. She went through a phase of putting copious amounts of black pepper on her food and seemed to genuinely enjoy it (she since reversed course on that).
My daughter went through a ketchup phase. She used to use french fries as a vessel for getting ketchup to her mouth and would lick the ketchup off and then redip and repeat until they got all soggy and slobbery. It made me want to gag watching it but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to introduce the notion of food being “gross”. We never used that word around food in our house.
If a child hears that “something is gross” or “that’s kid food” or “I don’t think she’s going to like garlic in it”, etc it sinks in and makes it really hard to get them to try something new. I tried really hard not to make assumptions out loud about what she would and would not eat and it was really cool to see her excited about artichokes and pate.
Once my child started eating with other kids unsupervised at school lunch, she all of a sudden had very different ideas about what was good and what was “gross”. Kids, even “good eaters”, go through weird food phases of trying to assert themselves by immersing themselves in what their peers do, or by being difficult to see how much you will accommodate them, and how much control they have over a situation like a mealtime.
Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between being a picky eater and a child that is just trying out different (often annoying) behaviors. But there is a difference. Behaviors come and go in developmental phases, whereas being a picky eater can easily become a lifelong condition that may affect their social well being along with their health. This is why it’s so important to lay a solid foundation for your child’s palate that will survive the social attacks on good habits and culinary curiosity that will come with going to school.
4. Eat For The Joy Of It, Not As A Reward
Except for “No Sugar before 2 years”, I don’t have rules when it comes to what we eat. We eat potato chips (Potato, oil, and salt – what’s wrong with that), and we eat full-fat foods without guilt or shame. Whole milk, heavy cream, duck fat, bacon drippings, cheese, Prosciutto, olive oil… I prefer local and organic produce and meat but there have been times in my life when I couldn’t afford to eat that way or didn’t have time to shop that way all the time and I didn’t beat myself up over it. We probably eat about 90% unprocessed foods but I will happily take down a Stauffer’s Lasagna (reminds me of my childhood) or a bag of Cheetos (how is that “cheese” powder so orange?). In summary, we eat largely unprocessed foods because that is what we prefer and because we know how to cook it. In our house, there are no hang-ups about indulging in really rich foods, carbs, or snacks.
Dessert after dinner? We usually skip it. Mostly because I don’t really have a sweet tooth and I don’t want to add more kitchen clean-up. We don’t use dessert or candy as a treat or reward for eating a good meal or anything else. There have been times when my daughter hasn’t eaten her dinner and then wants a bunch of snacks right before bed and I put my foot down on that. If she doesn’t eat dinner, we’ll remind her that she can’t have snacks, and then we’ll follow through. There’s been a couple of nights that she went to bed with just a glass of milk.
5. Don’t Cave Into Crazy Demands
One thing that I have always straight up refused to do on principle was to make special meals for my daughter separate from what we are eating. I got no time for that! I’ll build in choices to our meals, keeping the hot sauce or sauces on the side, but she’ll eat what I’ve made for the whole family. Sometimes my kid will declare she’s vegetarian today and we’ll let her omit the meat and take more of the side dishes, or if she’s not in the mood for mushrooms in our vegetable mix she can eat around them. I’ve learned that the next time they’re served she’ll take seconds if we don’t make it “a thing”.
When she starts complaining that she doesn’t want anything we’ve made, I invite her to help with meal planning and give me ideas for meals that she wants to eat. When I started doing this, I was cpleasantly surprised by how reasonable and balanced her menu ideas were. A recent meal idea of hers was venison (we have a freezer full) with cheesy mashed potatoes and grilled vegetables.
Sometimes it can be hard to tell what is a crazy demand and what is a reasonable request. If there’s a fair reason behind it, I consider it reasonable. I’ll cut the crust off bread because she says sourdough crust is too hard for her to bite through, fair enough. If she hasn’t liked something for the long term and I know ahead of time, I’ll serve it on the side. I leave spicy things out of our dishes and serve hot sauce on the side. I consider “crazy demands” as asking for things on the plate that she knows we don’t even have in the house. Or asking for something else that needs extensive prep and cooking at the time that dinner is served.
6. Include Kids In Meal Planning and Cooking
Think about it, if someone else was picking out everything you ate all the time, there would probably be things on your plate that you just weren’t in the mood for. I find if I get her feedback and ideas about the meals we serve, we have fewer protests at mealtime about her choices.
When she was around 2, she was really into helping in the kitchen, stirring pots, tossing ingredients into the pan, and tasting sauces and soups as they simmered. At 4 she decided that she knew all there was to know about cooking and didn’t need any help or supervision from me, an executive chef, so it got a little harder to cook with her and a little scarier to have her in the kitchen, but I let her do her own thing as much as I could. She makes up snack plates sometimes, cutting things with her own set of child-safe knives.
7. Time It Right
For awhile we were eating dinner around 6:30 or 7:30 but my daughter was binging on snacks around 5:30 and then not really eating a good dinner. So we moved dinner up to 5:30. This simple change made a big difference. Not only did she eat the whole dinner but we had so much more time in the evening for cleaning, stories, a family walk, and bath time that we wondered why we hadn’t done this sooner.
Once my child is hungry, it’s too late! I try to put a healthy snack in front of her without saying anything about it when she’s doing something else like schoolwork, coloring, or watching TV. Once she realizes she’s hungry and asks for snacks it’s too late, she can’t decide what she wants and doesn’t want anything I offer. I’ve found that our best timing is:
- Breakfast ASAp
- Morning snack at 10
- Lunch at 12
- Afternoon snack at 3
- Dinner at 5:30
Conclusion
We have a lot of parenting challenges with our little one. Power struggles, manners, listening, and helping to set the table… these are things I’m still figuring out. But underneath it all, I know my 6-year-old genuinely loves beets and broccoli and Brussel sprouts and that is a big win! We don’t have to make special meals or special requests or sneak in healthy ingredients to get her to eat all the food groups.
I believe if you start early, avoid sugar for as long as possible, expose children to real food and strong flavors, and make food fun by focusing on presentation, you will be surprised by how adventurous your child is. What’s worked for you? I would love to hear all about your challenges and successes and any tips you have for your little eaters in our comment section.
