The importance of educating childrens palates

Giving your children the best start you can

We eat 85,000 meals in a lifetime so let's give children the best start we can. It’s best to educate our children's palates while they are young as eating habits are formed in their first few years. Therefore it’s important to be aware of the positive influence you can have over your child during this time.

We believe in a very simple concept; the better quality food you serve your child, the better they will develop, concentrate and learn. Processed foods with nasty preservatives and additives have little or no nutritional value.

Our baby and toddler range is based on three principles we believe are necessary to ensure your child is open to new foods and different tastes.

1. Taste teaching babies what good/whole food is supposed to taste like. Read More...
2. Texture tasty food with texture. Texture is important to help babies learn to chew, swallow and develop speech. Read More...
3. Involvement the more your child experiences cooking and eating the more open they will be to eating and enjoying a wide variety of foods. Read More...

Taste
If the first foods your baby eats is pumpkin, avocado, sweet potato etc (which you have cooked and pureed) you are giving them a really good start. Machine-made food tastes different from home cooked. As corny as it sounds there’s more love in the home cooked and also more texture and flavour. When your baby moves from pureed to chunky pumpkin the taste will be the same so it won’t be like introducing new foods all the time making it easier for mums. Whole food will be all that your child knows.

We cook as you would do if you were cooking for your baby at home (only our quantities are slightly bigger). Fresh vegetables are hand chopped and lean meats diced or minced. Olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and fresh herbs are used in most meals, just in smaller quantities. Where a meal contains naturally salty food we don’t add salt ie: cheese, tomato, bacon etc. Our aim is to educate your child’s palate so they are ready to enjoy a wide variety of foods as adults do.

My niece’s favourite meal was GDS Roast Pumpkin and Spinach Risotto, complete with garlic, white wine, basil and parmesan cheese. She loved it and she was only 10 months old, which shows babies can enjoy flavoured meals if they eat whole foods from the introduction of solids.

Texture
Meals need to contain texture to encourage children to chew which in turn helps develop speech. Our chefs hand dice vegetables, use course mince or pieces of meat in our meals to retain a chunky texture which is missing in commercial baby meals.

If a baby does not practice eating foods which need chewing at around 7-9 months they may have trouble moving on from pureed foods to lumpy foods.

Many of the muscles a baby uses for eating and drinking are also used for making sounds and talking. Very soon you’ll hear the delightful sound of mum, mum, mum…

Involvement
Children are more likely to try new foods if they have been involved in the food preparation. Kids are like sponges so sit them in the kitchen so they can watch you.

My nephew was going through a stage where he was refusing to eat pumpkin so his mother thought she would hide some mashed pumpkin in some pasta sauce. He wanted to have a turn at mashing and once it was ready he ate spoonful after spoonful straight from the bowl. Food isn’t as scary if they have helped prepare it.

The reason we have given the meals cute names is all part of the teaching process. Eating Ali Baa Baa and his 40 Lentils is far more kid friendly than Lamb, Sweet Potato and Lentil Casserole. And just think how much fun it would be to eat wiggly worms!!

Children can help with basic tasks such as washing vegetables, mixing and stirring or even choosing which vegetables to have with the meal. Even just talking about what and how you are cooking will make a difference. Dinner may take a little longer but what joy you’ll experience when they gobble it all up!

In our 2005 survey we asked parents how important it was that their children learn to cook? 99% of mums said it was important or very important. 74% felt they should be taught by mum or a family member. Get them involved early and who knows maybe every day will be Mothers Day if they become a wizz in the kitchen.