Quick question for you. . .

I get it all the time: "I'd like to be healthier, but how can I make my child eat veggies?" I remember as a child singing some songs that were suppose to encourage me to eat good food. One went like this: "Oh I love broccoli, it's such a tasty sight. . .and liver makes me quiver with sheer delight. I always clean my plate, morning noon and night. I'm thankful for each bite." Another went like this: "Last night I didn't eat up my crust, I poked it in under my plate. I thought that no one would see it there, but when it grew dark and late, and I was in bed, all covered up tight, all covered but just my head, I saw that same old crust, I did, come walking up over my bed. He had 2 long ears, and great big eyes (actions!) and he grinned as he said to me, "I'm the crust you poked in under your plate. You couldn't hide me you see. You must never, never, never do that again." "All right, I won't," I said. I'll eat you up to the very last crumb, if you'll get down off of my bed." So he jumped right down, and he disappeared. I searched for him early and late, but he comes no more, cuz I never poke my crust in under my plate." Most of us needed every last little bit of encouragement to eat well. It seems classic and normal for kids to just turn up their nose to veggies and good food. . .but could there be a reason?

 I'd like to purpose that "we reap what we sow". There is a large body of evidence that says that a child is able to taste in the womb. There is also a bunch of studies that claim that we takes 20 exposures to a new food before accepting or liking it. (The exception to that is the memory and physiological connection we or our mother may have had to a food, even while eating it.) Put those together, and you can expose the child in the womb to all the foods you want the child to be eating for the rest of his life, in my understanding. (That is the easy way.) So a large variety of healthy veggies, (preferably not too disguised with casseroles and the like) in pregnancy, should equal a non picky child then, right? I have found it to be progressively more and more true for me; the healthier I have eaten in a particular pregnancy, the less picky that child is. I have heard the same from others too. I'd like to have others either chime in now or tell me my theory is all wet.