Almost all parents know it: Your child, who always ate his plate with relish, suddenly refuses to eat his vegetables. Carrots, beans, broccoli… The reaction to everything is: “No, I don’t like that!” How is it possible that toddlers suddenly no longer want to eat their vegetables? Have their tastes changed and they really don’t like it anymore, or is there something else going on?
You taste with your taste buds
You can taste the taste of different dishes with your taste buds. These are nerve endings that are located on the tongue in adults. These nerve endings are stimulated by tastes and send information about them to the brain. The brain converts these signals into a taste perception. An average adult has about 10,000 taste buds. Young children have many more. They are not only on the tongue but in the entire oral cavity. The taste buds allow us to distinguish between the tastes of sweet, sour, salty and bitter. The flavors umami (savory) and fat are sometimes added to this list.
Taste as a method of survival
In ancient times, the aversion to bitter tastes was very useful. Bitter plants and flowers were often poisonous. Sweet plants and fruits could be safely eaten by humans. It was therefore very important that human taste developed in such a way that it had a preference for sweet and an aversion to bitter. Over the years, however, humans have discovered that many of those bitter plants are not poisonous, but our taste buds are still behind in development.
Toddlers’ taste
As described above, young children have many more taste buds than adults. So you could say that they taste better. The bitter flavors, which have always served as a warning system for toxicity, still work very well in toddlers and preschoolers. They experience this bitterness much more than their parents. This also applies to spiciness; spicy dishes are often not liked by toddlers and preschoolers. . Based on their natural survival mechanism, toddlers reject bitter tastes.
Parents who do their best to prepare a healthy meal every day, including vegetables, can suffer greatly from this. They want their child to at least take a few bites, but their toddler simply refuses to open his or her mouth. It can also get out of hand and lead to a daily drama at the table where parents and child fight each other every evening. This battle is often won by the toddler.
Why do babies eat vegetables?
Very young children, babies and one-year-olds, also have a preference for sweets. However, after a few tries, the snacks of broccoli, carrot and cauliflower often go down well. This probably has to do with the child’s urge to explore. The child is at a point in development where discovering structures, flavors and food is so interesting that it takes the bitter taste for granted. As the child develops a little further, this interest in the phenomenon of eating solid food decreases. Then it focuses more on the taste and the dislike also grows.
What’s wrong with not eating vegetables?
The Nutrition Center’s advice for toddlers and preschoolers is to eat approximately 75 grams of vegetables per day and one or two pieces of fruit. Vegetables cannot be replaced by fruit, they contain other vitamins and minerals. Parents with an uncooperative toddler will therefore have to be creative to get their toddler to eat vegetables or accept that their child is lacking nutrients.
Tips to get a toddler to eat vegetables
Parents could try the following tips to get their toddler into veggies:
- Puree the vegetables very finely and hide them in an omelette or pancake, in pasta sauce or in soup.
- Let the child ‘help’ with cooking, for example shelling beans, putting pieces of cut vegetables in the pan, and washing the vegetables.
- Be creative in the presentation on the plate; Arrange the vegetables in the shape of a face or a boat.
If all attempts have failed, it is best for parents to wait patiently ; As the number of taste buds decreases, most children start eating vegetables again.