Food Experiments

If you are a parent of Toddler through School Age kid than you know that the food thing can be a challenge at times. Brennan was such an awesome eater as a baby. I made a LOT of his baby food from fresh produce in hopes that he would grow up to love fresh fruits and vegetables. His favorite was sweet potatoes! Now, the kid wouldn't put a sweet potato near his lips. Once he hit 2 years old and his independence started to take over he actually started having opinions - go figure! Brennan still does pretty good with eating but he likes your typical unhealthy fair - hamburgers, chicken tenders, mac 'n cheese, hot dogs, and his favorite - grilled cheese. He will eat apple sauce, pears, peaches, oranges, pineapples - but of the container variety that is covered in syrup. I tried to make myself feel better by purchasing the "light" syrup - but knew that it didn't replace the real thing. But, Brennan never liked sweets and still will not eat most cookies, candy, and cakes. . at least we have that going for us.

Anyways, I was reading in one of my favorite magazines Family Fun about a tip from a parent that said she tried doing food experiments to get her kids to try new foods. I knew this was the answer for Brennan. Brennan is a kid that needs ALL the facts before he tries something new. He wants to know all the details before just jumping in and taking anyone's word for it. Even pure logic wasn't good enough for him...example, "But Brennan, you like apple sauce, apple juice, cinnamon apples from Chili's, why won't you try an apple slice?" It just didn't work with him. Oh, AND he LOVES to do experiments! This was perfect! We talked the idea up to him and he chose to do apples as our first experiment. We went to the grocery store and found 10 different varieties of apples.

I got a big piece of butcher paper and divided it up into sections and we took our data on each apple. The way it looked, smelled, size, shape, color and taste. We even looked up info online about where it was grown and when it was discovered.

We then rated them if we liked it, it was okay or didn't like it. Brennan was gobbling up slice after slice of apple!!!! I about lost my mind. He decided he liked Honey Crisp and Golden Delicious apples the best and Granny Smith the least. I learned a lot as well...I learned that I hated Red Delicious, liked Granny Smith and loved Honey Crisp. And here's a picture of Brennan taking a bite out of his first apple at the age of 6. He now loves to eat apples for snack and will take them in his lunch....SUCCESS!!!!

Our second experiment Brennan chose to do was pears.

I think we also found 10 different varieties of pears and that was really fun. There are some really yummy pears out there and some that are not that great....for instance, you'd think that the French Butter Pear would be absolutely mouth watering. Nope, not at all. It was pretty gross. The asian pear tastes more like an apple and the Bartlett and Bosc are the most popular. We decided we liked the Bartlett and Red Bartlett the best.

Our next experiment included citrus fruit. 12 different varieties - from the largest Pummelo to the smallest kumquat. We liked the Ugli fruit, oranges and clementines the best. We invited some friends over for this experiment and we all learned about some new things that we liked. And tasting 12 different varieties of citrus in one night IS too much citrus!

We even got ambitious and tried a variety of dried fruits. Brennan was not as big a fan of the dried fruits - but it was still fun to go to Central Market's bulk food section and pick out 1 piece of each type of food. Nan joined us for this taste testing. And part of the experiment is that you have to try it even if you think you won't like it.

This has been such a success that we are going to keep running with this idea....tropical fruits, exotic fruits, stone fruits. Then move into the veggies.... Okay, so what are some of your ideas we could try?

Every night at dinner I cut up a piece of fruit and put it in the middle of the table. It has made me so happy to see Brennan grab for the fruit on the table first and say how delicious it is! Wow! It's just mind-blowing to me!