12 Ways to Get Your Super Picky Eater Regularly Eating New Foods

This article shares 12 ways to get your super picky eater regularly eating new foods. Use these tips when your child is tasting new foods or has eaten them a few times but isn’t yet eating them consistently. 

It feels like you’ve done everything right with your super picky eater. You’re regularly serving new foods. You’re not pressuring or requiring tastes. Fun hands-on interactions with new foods is a part of your routine. Your child is making progress. Except they’re stuck doing everything BUT eating.

One of my clients said it best: “We get stuck here no matter the food! Mostly with any kind of biting and swallowing (even tiny bites) but also with repeated eating on the few things he has actually swallowed!”

If this is your current reality, the first thing I want you to know is that you’re doing GREAT. This is not your fault. In fact, it’s normal. 

Kissing, licking and taking tiny tastes are a BIG deal. And they’re certainly worth celebrating. But these interactions are also very different from actually eating, so it’s not surprising that your child is stalling here.  But let’s be real – what you really need is new foods and more variety in your child’s diet. This article will tell you how to transform tastes into eating with your super picky eater.

Here are a few situations when these approaches can be effective: 

• Have tried it in a feeding therapy or food exploring session 
• Eat small amounts 
• Had it a few times 
• Are biting, licking and/or tasting the food
• Tried it somewhere randomly like at a birthday party or at a restaurant

Actually eating a new food is a big jump and getting there might require different strategies than the ones that got your child to tasting and other interactions. Use the tips below when your child has “mastered” tasting and it seems like it’s time for them to move onto the next step.

Quick disclaimer: these aren’t “first line” strategies I recommend to encourage kids to taste and get comfortable with a new food. Instead, I recommend these once a child is already tasting a new food or is very close to tasting a new food. The idea is that these strategies provide extra incentive and push them over the edge to finally eat a new food once they are already able. 

Not sure how to get your child close to eating? I break it all down for you in my FREE 5 Steps to Eating Mini Training. Snag it here for free.

12 Ways to Get Your Super Picky Eater Regularly Eating New Foods

These hacks are helpful for getting your child over the tasting hump so they actually eat a new food all on their own. 

1. Get silly and make it fun: 
   • Suggest taking weird bites
   • Pretend to be a character (my 3 year old loves pretending to have a “boat snack” like Maui from Moana)
   • Sing a silly eating song 
   • Propose a challenge (I offer a cool spinner activity for families in Eating with Ease)
2. Use cool tools: 
   • Fun plates 
   • Silly utensils
   • Compartmentalized snack boxes like this, this, or this
   • Giant tongs 
   • Food picks
3. Offer the food in small portions at meals and snacks
4. Eat it yourself. Eat it with them. Let them see you eating it. 
5. Serve the new food without a highly preferred food alongside it. Instead, serve the new food with “medium” or less preferred food 
6. Get them involved in the prep, serving, food shopping, etc. Interactions away from the table build comfort and incentive to eat. 
7. Continue to provide opportunities to explore and get hands-on with the food, both at mealtimes and independently of mealtimes 
8. Encourage bigger tastes
9. Encourage more tastes 
10. Offer the food when you’re not around (like in a lunchbox) or when you’re not paying attention 
11. Let them know they can spit it out
12. Pair it with a preferred food 

Reminder: 

Once you know that your child can eat something new (they’ve had a decent amount a few times), you’ll want to stop including a most preferred food when you serve it at meals. In other words, at some point, the training wheels need to come off. This will look like only offering the “new” food at meals – maybe with a moderately preferred food, maybe not. That way the “new” food can transition” to “preferred” – finally!

Finally, you can also try offering a gentle nudge, something I’ve been talking about nonstop with my clients. Essentially, you’re pushing the envelope just enough

This could be having an upfront discussion about eating the food, which works particularly well with older kids. 

Bringing it all together 

Be patient. The best results with picky eaters come when they’re internally motivated to eat. Accept your child’s ability to eat something new as progress even if they’re still working to incorporate the new food into their diet.