Challenge Your Child's Taste Buds

We all remember the days of the Coke-Pepsi taste tests, and most of us will admit to pulling out the blindfolds for our own home-based taste tests. In addition to putting to rest which soda tasted better, we had fun! This tip is one I pulled out of my mother's bag of tricks. If she knew that I would eat anything served on my robot plate, she also knew that my brother would eat anything in the context of a taste test.

You can fashion a blindfold out of any opaque material in your home, such as the cloth belt of a shower robe, or you can make a mask out of construction paper and string. Just don't put a bag over your child's head! Next, prepare two new vegetables—or two vegetables prepared in a different way—and one at a time match them up against another vegetable that you know your child will eat. Be very formal about the contest. Your child is the "official food-testing judge" and should be offered a drink between bites to cleanse his palate. The more you immerse your family into the game of taste-testing, the more successful the outcome will be.

Keep in mind, however, that even though your child will have fun taste-testing, not everything will taste good to him. The goal, however, is simply to have him follow the one-bite rule by taking that one bite!

More on: Healthy Meals for Families

Excerpted from:

From Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents by Henry Legere, M.D. Copyright © 2004. Used by arrangement with The Perseus Books Group.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.