Getting children to eat their greens seems to be a never ending battle for most parents. The solution? Eat lots of vegetables while pregnant.
A leading paediatrician and author believes the key to raising veggie-loving kids lies with mums-to-be who drink carrot juice and eat other healthy foods.
It's all due to babies in utero having more taste buds than after they're born and food flavours crossing over into the amniotic fluid.Alan Greene, Stanford University paediatrician and author of "Feeding Baby Green" told USA Today that experiencing different food flavours while still in the womb can create a lasting imprint on children's taste buds.
"With a new baby, you have the opportunity to 'get in on the ground floor' when you invest in your child by making healthy food choices," he says on his web site.
But if the idea of upping your intake of sprouts makes you feel queasy, don't despair. Greene says that babies will eat almost anything up to about six months old.
However, not many parents take advantage of this golden window of opportunity. Greene said that 94% of parents give up offering new foods after only five tries, resulting in almost a third of under fours not eating any vegetables.
And after they hit the age of two, children's food preferences start to solidify. At that point, it takes an average of 90 attempts to get a child to try something new.
It's not all bad news though if you're the parent of a veggie-hating three-year-old.
One way to get them to love vegetables is to get children growing their own, according to paediatrician Laura Jana, the author of the American Academy of Pediatrics' "Food Fights".
She also owns a child-care centre, Primrose School of Legacy in Nebraska where the children grow vegetables.
"They eat stewed tomatoes because they grew them. I didn't do that well with my own kids," she said.
Do your children eat their veggies? How did you encourage this?
Source (ParentDish US)