Trying a new food sounds like it should be simple! For some kids it might be but for those who are more specific eaters, offering a new food may be an incredibly distressing experience.
There may be a variety of reasons to expand your child’s diet. Whether it’s noticing their food selection getting smaller, making meal time difficult or they are having some growth concerns. It can just be challenging to know where to start.
This post will offer 6 tips on how to offer new foods to children and adolescents but keep in mind that these can be applied to teenagers and adults as well!
- Let your child know ahead of time
Imagine walking into work and being told you had to complete a new project by the end of the day that you knew nothing about. It would probably feel incredibly overwhelming and you’d likely be frustrated at your boss. Kids can feel similarly when it comes to a new food or situation they were not prompted about. Most children need support in regulating their emotions so for those parents who know your kids have a harder time with change, we want to be mindful of this with mealtime.
There are few things we can do ahead of time to communicate what the child can expect with new foods:
- Pick one “exposure day” each week that is dedicated to trying a new food. Think about a day of the week that feels the most flexible and open to hold space for this experience. This should give everyone time to shop and plan without surprise.
- Consider creating a list of foods with your child that you plan to try. Ask them what they would like to try and you can also offer ideas. This could be foods that they’ve never had before, foods that you think would make mealtime easier, a food group that feels lacking or maybe foods that they used to eat but no longer do.
- Talk about the food ahead of time: explain what the food is, maybe what food group it falls under, what that food can do for our body. Example: “Apples are a red fruit and they have vitamin C which can help our body fight off sickness”
- Name the expectation of the new food
It is often assumed the first (and maybe only) step in trying a new food is to eat it but there is actually a lot that can come before this!
A few things to consider:
Exploring all of the senses helps to give them a much deeper understanding of the reason they may or may not like a food. Children think in a very black and white way, often saying “yes” or “no” to liking a food. Only having them taste a food may limit their understanding of their experience.
Some things you can ask:
- What do you see? (ex: color, shape)
- What do you hear? (ex: is there a sound from the package opening or the food being prepared)
- What does it feel like on your fork/spook/in your hand? (ex: squishy, soft)
- What does it smell like? (ex: peppery, sweet)
I have personally found in our home that the more we talk about the color, what it resembles (ex: broccoli looks like a little tree) or how it smells, my toddler is way more likely to taste something vs when we say, “please take a bite of your broccoli”.
If we jump right to asking our child to eat a new food it may just be too much too soon. Maybe the first time we offer broccoli the goal is to just be around it. From there each time that food is offered you can build on engaging the senses as described above and then work in a taste test. With this, the goal does not have to be to finish the entire serving of the food. That can help to take some pressure off of the experience.
When your child does start tasting a new food, I like to recommend having them rank it in a few different ways:
- On a scale of 1-10 (1 being horrible, 10 being the best food ever), you can ask how they’d rank this food. This helps their brain create new categories vs yes or no.
- You can ask “is this a never food, sometimes food or always food”. This helps you as parents better gauge how often it makes sense to serve certain foods and why.
- Pair a new food with a safe food
Again, think about that work experience. Let’s say instead of being given a project to complete on your own, you were able to buddy up with a colleague. You automatically feel less overwhelmed. When you offer a new food with a safe food(s), it is going to feel much more comfortable for your child to consider exploring. A “safe food” is something that you know your child will eat without hesitation.
An example may be, if you’d like your child to eat peas at dinner, instead of serving a portion of peas as their main veggie, we can serve a couple peas (like 2-4 peas total) with a normal side of cucumber that you know they will eat. It takes the pressure way down.
Again, name the expectation of the food. “Tonight our dinner experiment/exploration is that we are all going to have some peas on our plate. Last week we looked at their color and shape, tonight we’re going to see what one tastes like. You don’t have to eat all of them but we’re going to see what they feel like in our mouth, how they taste and then rate them. We’ll see what we all come up with!”
Your kids’ safe foods may make zero sense to you. They just think about food in a way that is unique to them. Sometimes there is a pattern, like most soft foods are a no go but crunchy things are fine. Some kids really lean into the predictability of food. For example, a saltine cracker is a saltine cracker is a saltine cracker. Everytime you reach into the bag of crackers, each one looks and tastes pretty much the exact same (except for when one is broken.. we’ve all been there). But you get what I’m saying! Compare this to something like blueberries. Each time you pick a blueberry out of a container the shape, color, size and taste can be very different. How distressing for a kid who likes predictability! There’s a good chance they may avoid foods that lack predictability. I often point that out to the kids and parents that I work with so they all can also make that connection. It can be a tool to normalize the fact that some foods are not going to be predictable and that is okay! It may be distressing AND the more we can practice, the more we will get comfortable with it.
- Be mindful of pressure at the meal
Naming the expectation as discussed above is helpful for kids but it’s also helpful for parents. We want to check in on how much pressure we’re putting on ourselves and our child.
Our role is to offer the food for our kids to eat but it is still up to the child whether they will eat that food and how much*. Ellyn Satter talks about being mindful of positive and negative pressure.
- Positive pressure can sound like praising, rewarding or even cheering. An example may be “Yay! You ate your broccoli. You earned a treat for that”
- Negative pressure can sound like bribing, threatening or withholding. An example may be, “If you don’t eat your broccoli you will lose your Ipad for the night.”
Both of these may work temporarily or not at all.
A goal can be to try and stay as neutral as you can and have trust in the process. You could say, “Trying new foods can be scary. Take your time and we’ll do it together.” You may also consider having dinner conversations that have nothing to do with food! Think about topics that would feel casual and light to give some distraction to the meal.
*If your child is recovering from an eating disorder, this is a conversation you want to have with their medical team as nutrition decisions may need to be left to parents completely.
- Make it fun!
Sometimes it is important to take a step back and ask ourselves, what is our end goal? If we simply want them to have more variety, it takes time and a lot of patience. I mean a lot. It is a slow and steady process and when we take the pressure off of a timeline it takes the pressure off of our kid, and us!
Some fun things to try that can engage the whole family:
- Taste plate: pick a plate that is a fun color or that has their favorite character on it. Name that their “taste plate” where all new foods go to be explored.
- Find fun utensils: Amazon sells a lot of options for fun shaped utensils, tiny themed tooth picks, cookie cutters etc.. Although this may not be how all food is served outside of the house, it gives you a starting place to then gradually introduce the food how it may realistically look elsewhere.
- Fruit/veggie of the week: I recommend this all the time to even my adult clients! Instead of thinking you have to try all of the fruits and veggies, decide on one new produce option to try each week. For example, if you want to add in more fruit and know your family typically eats bananas and apples, have your child (or you) pick a new fruit to try for that week. Think about what is in season and where in your day you may add it. Example: kiwi and a cheese stick instead of an apple for morning snack
- Color of the week: similar to fruit/veggie of the week, consider picking a color theme. What color would be fun to add into a snack/meal?
- Animal bites: most kids love games so don’t be afraid to make a meal/snack silly. Think about their favorite animal and ask them how they think they would eat this food. “Can you show me a penguin bite?”
- Play detective: Ask them to take notes on what they discover with the new food they’re trying. Again use the prompts described above to allow them to engage all of their senses but let their little brains be imaginative, even if it’s describing why they very much dislike broccoli
- Repetition is key
I think it’s also incredibly important to validate how difficult it can be to just serve a meal let alone keep up with offering new foods. It would make sense to not want to repeat something again if it created a lot of distress at the table. We all hate to waste food and just want to make it through dinner as peacefully as possible. Hold space for the process. Do your best to remember: the more predictable the experience is and the more we repeat foods, the easier it will get. You’d be surprised how often a child chooses to try something that continues to show up on their plate/on the table with low pressure to taste it or complete it. Just keep putting it in front of them.
It’s also worth noting that as kids get older, rebellion is a normal part of development. Help them see that you as the parent have a big role in deciding what is being served, and they also have some autonomy in their experience.
Overall, this is not a magic guide on how to guarantee your child eats “101 new foods by 10” but it is a starting place to help mealtime feel a bit more manageable, while setting your child up for future success. Dr. Becky Kennedy uses the phrase “I’m long term greedy” and I couldn’t agree more with that when it comes to eating. Minimizing “in the moment distress” likely will not help our future self and/or child. Holding space for distress while offering ways to cope through it with the ideas above will allow you and your child to build a much more robust food selection.
As always, we love to work with you and your kiddos! If you want one-on-one support on introducing new foods (at all ages!) reach out to us at info@pearlsofnutrition.com or visit the Work With Us page on our website.
References:
Anderson, Jennifer. (2026, May 15). 12 expert tips for parents of picky eaters. Kids Eat in Color. https://kidseatincolor.com/picky-eating/
Satter, E. (n.d.). Introducing new foods. Ellyn Satter Institute. https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/introducing-new-foods/
