Did your children "grow into" a willingness to eat vegetables...?

[InmaculadaConcepcion]

...or other previously rejected foods?

I don't mean by adulthood, I guess I'm talking more by primary school age.

My almost 2 year-old DD is a vegetable refusenik (she will sometimes eat potato, but that's it). Loves most fruit and also adores cheese, bread, yoghurt (generally eats plain) and some forms of egg (scrambled with cheese) plus pasta and pesto.

I would love her to eat more veg and pulses, but she's not keen (although she was weaned happily eating chunks of roasted veg).

I've spoken to a few people who reckon many children grow out of these dislikes (although I'm aware some get worse - I've looked at the very fussy eaters thread in this section!!) so I wondered what others' experiences have been.

At what age did your child start to include previously despised things like vegetables in their repertoire?

My DD is 10.8 and, despite enjoying veg and fruit when weaning, won't look at them now.
She will tolerate lychees and rambutan but, since they aren't native to England and very costly, she doesn't often get them.
She's never had a pulse in her mouth, apart from a baked bean and that is rare. She will eat odd stuff like octopus and squid readily.

DS was incredibly fussy - no sauces, no mixed-up foods, was always OK on plain vegetables but not in sauces or things like lasagne. But from about age 10 or 11 he started improving rapidly - I think a lot of it was the pre-puberty growth spurt making him hungry all the time, but there was also a huge attitude shift in his willingness to try new things. Moving to secondary school and having school lunches every day also helped.

I had stopped stressing about it and didn't put pressure on him to eat stuff (couldn't take turning every meal into a battle), but he did respond well to challenges (often with bribes/rewards) by his uncle to try new things, eg on holiday, he gave DS one euro for eating a raw oyster.

He is now 13 and his favourite foods now are things like fish curry and moules marinieres - I would not have believed it four years ago. But he does still go for old favourites like plain tomato and cheese pizza rather than more interesting toppings, and has to be persuaded to eat salad (he is suddenly 'full' when it comes to salad...).

DD, now 9, is still fussy but has improved a little. I'm hoping she'll follow a similar pattern.

Here is what I tried

Cut the veg up very small (so can eat with a spoon)
Blended into a sauce they liked
Thin sticks of carrots
Cover with melted cheese (did not work so well with Broccoli)

The more they eat the more they learn to like, most of the food I hated as a child is now my favorites (aside from mums pastry which I am told is now used by the British Army as ballistic armor.

My DS refused most fruit and veg at around 18months, we went with the no pressure approach and just over 2 years down the line he will eat 4 veggies and the occasional banana. He'll eat smoothies, soup, and is just getting back into fruit yogurt.

I was different, I refused anything but carrot and strawberries until well into my teens! However, I now have an allotment and eat most veg apart from cabbage and sprouts! :)

Arf at ballistic armor!

The reason I found Mumsnet is because DS was such a picky eater, including all things vegetables. It drove me batty for so long because he refused to eat anything, but we persevered and made him take 1 bite of things he didn't like, and he could quit after that. We also never gave him more than 1 thing a meal he didn't like. He started getting a little better at 3, much better at 4, and at 5 he'll eat anything (and we will try just about anything odd around here, this weekend he tried alligator) except for raw onions. DD was similarly picky, and grew out of it not to the same extent as DS, but she does great for being 6.

Oops, made a mistake. At 5 he ate pretty much anything, and now he's 8.

I hate not being able to edit posts.

Around 18 months my DD would only eat cucumber and was very fussy, somewhere around 2 she started adding more veg, now at 3 she is still picky rather than fussy, but prefers fresh fruit and veg to most other foods (she thinks green beans are a treat strange girl!).

She does like them mostly raw sticks of carrot, cucumber, red pepper, cherry toms, celery, lettuce or steamed if it is brocolli, grean beans, peas, sweetcorn.

I would suggest always serving some mixed raw veggies with a sandwich at lunch or giving them as a pre-dinner snack around 4pm, DD loves edamame (soya beans) and calls them popping beans.

I can't say it is down to me though it is just what she prefers to eat? Until she was 3 she never even ate a sandwich and lunch would always be a plate of veggies, cheese, ham, turkey etc. It was a bit expensive to feed that way (no filler) but she did eat lots of healthy stuff.

Start with bland veggies like cucumber and then add the sweeter ones cherry toms, raw baby carrots, red pepper - kids seem to like them more than traditional cooked veg.

When DS first ate solid food, he would eat just about any vegetable. Then he started to refuse them one by one. The last to go were peas and sweetcorn, until all that was left were carrots which I tended to serve often, so I am surprised we are not all bright orange. He would eat all fruit, and tinned tomatoes in sauces - just nothing green. So I was very suprised when one day in his teens, he anounced that he was going to make me a Caesar salad and proceded to do so.

That's very reassuring MmeBucket and Doitnicely!

I bet you almost fainted, Cecily!!

Well, I like the idea of offering "crudites", especially as a snack! I shall give that a go.
I gave her some as an appetiser before her main lunch today. She put a bit of grated carrot in her mouth (because she assumed it was Red Leicester!) then spat it out. But she was vaguely interested and at least the food wasn't thrown across the room in a rage, so I suppose that's something!

As yet, DD is too young to agree to rules about taking one bit of things (she just throws a wobbler if we try and push her wrt food, so we're taking the no pressure approach as we don't want to make meals an unpleasant, stressful battleground for all of us) but I think I will try that when she's a little more mature....

I put vegetables into my smoothies with fruit. For example, apples and spinach, cucumbers and oranges, yellow peppers and apples. DS likes them but he's only 12 months, so plenty of time to start refusing...