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Keep eating as a matter-of-fact & don’t fuss at your child for not finishing her food. You want your child to eat to satisfy her appetite, not to please you.

Don’t cook on demand. Never get up & make special meals. Service a well-balanced meal & let your child eat what she wants from what you have served.

Avoid the dessert dilemma. Don’t reward eating ‘good’ food with ‘bad’ foods. If you do, you’re letting her fill up on empty calories. Serve nutritious desserts ie fruit, gelatin with fruit, or yogurt.

Limit or ban the amount of junk food & sweets kept in the house. This way you only have nutritious foods for your child to consider as choices when hungry.

Add soft tofu or cooked vegetables that are pureed into tomato sauce to top the spaghetti.

Add unsweetened applesauce or shredded carrots to muffin mix.

Chop spinach or broccoli into ricotta cheese when stuffing shells.

Do not fall into the trap of feeling the child will starve & thus give in to her desire for junk food.

If you introduce foods in a confrontational way, you & your child may become caught up in a battle. Just state the rules of eating matter of fact.

Children love to dip foods into yogurt or guacamole, fruit puree & nibble.

Food preferences are developed early in life & once established, are hard to break. Thus, the earlier you encourage healthful food choices for your child, the better.

Your child will watch you for clues to proper food choices. They eat junk food because you buy junk food.

Teach her to enjoy the flavor of fresh foods before she gets hooked on canned, artificial tastes.

What your young taste buds are exposed to are what habits you are likely to continue.

Grate the vegetables into their favorite foods.

Use a muffin tray & fill each section with bite-size portions of nutritious foods ie avocado slices, hard boiled egg wedges, broccoli trees, cheese blocks, O-shaped cereal, peeled apple slices spread with peanut butter, different shaped cooked pasta.

Have the child help with the cooking. They can use cookie cutters to create design out of foods like cheese, bread, meat slices, & long lasagna noodles.

Have the child help with the cooking. They can wash the lettuce, scrub the potatoes, stir the batter. Put pancake batter in a squeeze bottle and help them squeeze the batter onto the hot griddle in shapes of the alphabet.

Serve smaller portions on smaller plates.

Let the child pick the green pepper or onion bits out of the spaghetti. They won’t get them all & it’s too much work.

Set a simple rule of at least 1 bite of a new food.

Quit buying junk foods or empty calorie food & drink items.

If the child won’t eat, take away the plate & calmly tell your child that there will be no more food until the next meal. Be firm, but pleasant. Be consistent & soon they will know they better eat when it is time to eat.

Exercise yields a hearty appetite!

Do not run back into the kitchen & cook an alternative meal that the child MIGHT eat. This just reinforces pickiness. Simply deny all snacks until the next meal.

If they like different types of drinks, make a smoothie together and add wheat germ, yogurt, honey, bee pollen, and/or powdered protein.

Set a regular eating time. No television while eating! No eating except at the table.

If you want to have the child involved in making choices of what to eat, limit the choice to 2 items and you decide the other foods.

It gets easier once the child learns the rules have changed, but the parent must be consistent in keeping to the new rules made by the parent.