How to Actually Help The Kids Try New Foods

Welcome to YTF Community, a place to safely share in the challenges and joys of feeding our families. And make all of it easier!

I have built a career sharing recipes for families with little kids (or for anyone who just wants easy and yummy). I share advice for “picky eating” because I know how hard it can be to feed kids.

But I also know—from my own struggles with losing through my appetite through the stress of my divorce two years ago and then rediscovering it—that lumping so many feeding challenges under the “picky eating” bucket isn’t helping us find easier ways to feed our families.

And the hyper-focusing on continuously serving new foods that goes along with it is definitely not improving how, or what, anyone is actually eating.

Truthfully, I mainly eat the same foods over and over when I am left to my own devices. This is easy, comforting, and cost effective. Then, every so often, I try something new, get excited about some other random food, or have a wild craving for something else. I fully own this without guilt because it seems so normal to me!

But I also FULLY see that the way I eat would be labeled as “bad” or a problem to solve if I was a little kid.

We have to ditch the idea that we have to keep introducing new foods to our kids—and getting them to eat all of them—as the marker of us doing a “good job”.

There are SO many other ways to have happier meal times and gently expand the list of accepted foods. And while I admit that this is not a buzzy sound bite that would do well in a social media post, here’s my take on how to do just that.

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