MUNCIE, Ind. (NewsLink)--March is National Nutrition Month, and the ones who seem the hardest to persuade to eat healthier are children. One professor has come up with tips and tricks on how to get picky eaters ready for some veggies.
Ball State Special Education professor Laura Seiverling, who specializes in applied behavior analysis and pediatric feeding disorders, partnered with Penn State pediatrics professor Keith Williams to write Broccoli Boot Camp. Here, they create a comprehensive guide which presents methods to successfully expand a child’s preference for healthier foods.
“We have a lot of personal experience implementing these plans and that’s why we understand that not every plan is going to work for every child, and so that’s why it was really important to us to give parents a range of options,” said Seiverling.
Tips offered in the book include introducing small bites of news foods, using a reward system for tasting new foods and focusing on reinforcing behaviors you want to see and avoiding getting into “mealtime battles.”
“One thing that we really try to hit home in the book is the importance of something called repeated taste exposure. So, it takes, in general, about ten to fifteen exposures to develop a preference for a food, and what research has shown is that most parents will give up after three exposures or less when they are presenting something to their child if it seems like the child doesn’t like the particular food. All of the different plans are really designed to allow this repeated taste exposure to occur, and we don’t want parents to get discouraged if the first time you present something your child doesn’t seem to love the food that your offering,” said Seiverling.
All this and more can be found in Seiverling’s book, Broccoli Boot Camp, or on their website, broccolibootcamp.com
