How to get children to try new food?

I always think of Rosemary as having a very wide taste when it comes to food, however, it’s becoming apparent that this isn’t really the case. She has a number of meals that she really, really likes, a number that she’ll eat and then she has the increasingly frustrating refusal to try new food.

We’re not overly fussy about the girls finishing everything on their plate – coming from the baby-led weaning roots, we’d be unlikely to be, after all. We do have a few rules, though. You must try new things. You must retry old things every few months in case your tastes have changed. And you must be polite. It’s fine not to like something, but it’s rude to say ‘That’s disgusting’ or ‘Yeuch’ or to pretend to vomit.

Unfortunately, Rosemary has recently started to say ‘That’s disgusting. I’m not even going to eat that. At all. Never,’ as soon as something new appears on the table. If we manage to talk her into trying it, she’ll put a tiny amount in her mouth and at the least screw her eyes and nose up and say ‘No. Don’t like it,’ and at worst make fake vomiting noises and throw it off her plate.

And now Eleanor’s copying her. Mostly just in the refusal to try something new and, at the moment at least, she will still usually try whatever it is off one of our plates. And she’s only really doing it if Rosemary’s just done it, too, but I’m sure if it continues like this, it won’t be long before she, too, is steadfastly refusing to try anything new.

And boy are they missing out. Last night, Chris made a delicious Gratin Dauphinoise (sorry, no picture) and a couple of weeks ago I made this (badly photographed, but very tasty) asparagus and pecorino quiche. Neither of which the girls ate. Yes, I know, all the more for us, but it’s a problem that we are finding challenging.

Baby-led weaning gave us very unfussy children for such a long time, that it’s a bit of a shock to the system to have this seemingly suddenly have to deal with food refusal. I realise that we are actually very lucky and that we could have children who refused to eat anything but one item, or one colour, or who would not touch any proper food. We are lucky that the foods they love are healthy ones, such as vegetable risotto, minestrone soup and creamy leeky tagliatelle and prawns in a Cajun spice and yoghurt sauce (the latter is Eleanor only – she is completely addicted to prawns). They also like a decent amount of fruit. We could feed them for a week on healthy recipes they like.

But we want them to experience new flavours and foods and to have some reasonably basic table manners. Is that too much to ask?

Do you have any tips for introducing new meals without an argument? Is this a phase that will pass in a few months (please don’t tell me it will last a few years)? Do you have fussy eaters and how do you tackle the issue? Do you have good eaters and do you think you’re just lucky or did something you do bring it about? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.