In older times when food was local and fresh expecting mothers were eating healthy during their pregnancy, which is when fetuses get a sniff of food for the first time. Nursing time provides babies with nutrients and tastes that come from what their mother eats, and babies react to things they get through the maternal milk just like if they had directly ingested the actual food or drink. When our firstborn was a couple of weeks old (he was born the night before his father’s business school final presentation) I celebrated his father’s graduation with a glass of champagne. After the next feeding our baby, who usually demanded to be fed every four hours like a Swiss watch, didn’t wake up for a couple of feedings. It took us, young and inexperienced parents, a little while to understand why that had happened.
If introduced to healthy food during gestation and nursing time, children will more likely be willing to eat vegetables and fruits later on, when they develop their taste, between 4 and 7 years of age. Afterwords it becomes more difficult to introduce them to, or get them to try, new things. That is why it is so important to instill healthy habits in them from the very beginning.
I have found it a good idea to keep children interested in, and involved with healthy food: it encourages them to be less diffident about trying something they don’t know. With only my youngest one left at home while her siblings were in school, grocery shopping was a fun game. Keeping my toddler safely (for my safety, that is!) in the cart, I would ask her to point to a fruit or vegetable and literally run the cart towards what she had pointed at enjoying her giggles (it wasn’t always towards what I had meant to get, but thankfully often close enough…) She would later babble with pride to her older siblings about choosing the ingredients for the meal on the table.
Children love to play with water, and will be happy to wash veggies, while becoming familiar with the food they handle. They like to be asked for help in preparing a meal, which will encourage them to later eat with out a fuss the meal they helped to make.
Young children often have to taste a food several times before they accept that they like it; some patience, most often a great deal of it, from their adults will turn out to be more rewarding than endless stressful and messy battles of the wills!
In Italy there is a saying, “A tavola non s’invecchia!” (We don’t age while at the table!) Life has become so hectic that there is no time for the prolonged meals our ancestors were used to. Still, meal times should be happy times when memories are created, occasions to be enjoyed around the table with family and friends sharing meals nutritionally beneficial to all!
Buon appetito!