Top tips for introducing new foods to children from the Healthy Eating Advisory Service.

BY BONNIE LAXTON-BLINKHORN, KINDICARE

MARCH 14, 2023.

Feel like you’re all alone when it comes to feeding your fussy eater? Well, you’re not!  

Research shows that up to 50% of all 0–3-year-old children refuse to eat new or different foods at least half the time and being wary of new things is actually a healthy developmental stage for youngsters.

However, while ‘fussy eating’ and foods refusal is normal for children, it can present challenges for families trying to introduce new foods to the table at mealtimes.  

Carer provides, child decides

Children and their carers (including educators and parents) each have different responsibilities when it comes to promoting, providing and consuming healthy food and drinks. 

When parents and carers provide a safe, nutritious, positive and supportive eating environment, children have an opportunity to decide what and how much they eat. 

Your responsibilities as a parent or carer when teaching and providing food to children are to determine: 

• what foods children are exposed to, and what is on the menu. 
• when children eat, and how often (e.g. offering meals every 2-3 hours). 
• where the children eat and the mealtime environment. 

 

This leaves the child with responsibility for deciding how much they eat, and whether they will try something new. 

Repeated exposure 

Repeated exposure makes new food more familiar and can reduce fear or aversion. Some children may need to be exposed to a new food 10 or more times before they feel comfortable with it3 and even then, they still might not enjoy eating it – remember, even adults don’t like everything! 

You can expose children to new foods by engaging all their senses, such as putting the food to their lips but not tasting it or looking at it and discussing it.   

Here are a few ways to engage all a child’s senses, as well as their curiosity, about a new food:  

• Sight: What does it look like? How big is it? What shape and colour is it? 
• Smell: What does the food smell like? Is it sweet or fruity? 
• Touch: What does the food feel like? Is it smooth, rough, spiky, or fuzzy? Does it feel different in your hands than it does on your lips, or your tongue?
• Taste: What does it taste like? Is it sweet or sour?
• Sound: What sound does it make when you take a bite? Is it crunchy? 

 

It can help to introduce just one new food at a time. For example, if you want to add pumpkin and chickpea risotto to the meal rotation, expose children to any ingredients that might be new to them.  

You could focus on the pumpkin first, then move onto chickpeas trying some of the tricks suggested above.  

Encouraging healthy eating and overcoming food refusal takes a team approach but there’s lots you can do to broaden a child’s palate and their mind. 

You could: 

• Include healthy eating in games and activities such as having a garden or plants for children to tend to, cooking with children, and singing and reading about healthy foods. 
• Build learning while trying new foods, such as planning an activity with a new food, and including it on the menu. For example, growing beetroot in the garden, doing a fun art activity with beetroot, then serving it for dinner. 
• Provide happy and supportive mealtimes by allowing children to serve themselves, avoid applying pressure to eat everything and by not making a big deal if they refuse the food. 
• Role model healthy eating practices by eating healthy foods with children and by talking about it positively. 
• Allow children time to explore new foods and don’t worry if they play with their food. Repeated exposure to new foods grows familiarity.
• Create bridges of familiar foods with new foods, such as serving a new food with other familiar foods.
• Reinforce healthy eating with positive messaging, through books, games and activities.  

 

You can find more healthy eating games and activity ideas here. 

The content for this post was adapted in collaboration with Nutrition Australia’s Healthy Eating Advisory Service and it based on the resource Introducing new foods to children. 

[1] Better Health Channel, Toddlers and fussy eating, Department of Health & Human Services, State Government of Victoria.  

[2] Slatter, E, Ellyn Slatter’s Division of Responsibility in Feeding, 2015.  

[3] Food - Fussy eating in toddlers, Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, NSW Health.