Do I cater to her preferences or give her a vaired diet?

[Artichokes]

DD is 11 months and self feeds. She may only be 11 months but she has a STRONG will and knows exactly what she likes.

If I give her food covered in tomato sauce (not ketchup - any type of tomato based pasta-type sauce) then she gobbles it up. She can seriously beat me on lunchtime portions as she eats so much. Most other mums gasp at the sight of it. However, if I omit the tomato sauce she hardly touches a thing (unless it is sweet).

What I want to know is whether I should put tomato on everything as she obviously loves it? Or should I limit the tomato to try and retain some sense of variety in the tastes she experiencs? I am worried that if she gets used to only tasting tomato she will never try anything new.

bump

My facebook is down and I am bored. Humour me by addressing my boring little conundrum.

Cooked tomatoes are supposedly a superfood so at least she likes something healthy. Can you try adding cheese sauce or spinach sauce gradually to see if she will try it?

Give her the tomato sauce on her food for either lunch or dinner each day and when she has the tomato-free meal make sure that the pudding is something healthy that she likes (fruit? yoghurt?) so she will get enough food if she really doesn't do much with the main course.
I tend to feed my DS a variety of things though he has marked preferences - if he doesn't care for a meal he's given, I don't replace it with anything else but I do make sure the next meal is something that he likes. He's 2.10 now and eats loads of different things. Good luck.

Well, if you insist (after all, MN should be grateful for your attention ) I'll try to humour you...

Children often go through fads and phases. I would both giver her tomato with everything, and also give her non-sauce fdoods at the same time. Eg pour sauce over, rather than mixit in so that the middle of the food isn't sauce-flavoured. Also, take advatage of er sauce fixation to give her a wide range of foods with the sauce.

My dd had been a brilliant eater, but got gastro at about 8-9m. As a result she would only eat Rice Krispies afterwards, and for a couple of months every meal had to include Rice Krispies! But eventually she went back to her excellent eating.

Thanks for the humouring. To my horror I had to disappear and do some actual work for a minute.

I am onyl concerend because she seems very young to be so picky. Mums with olders LOs always seem to say this age is great as they will eat anything .

It is a good idea to take advantage of the fixation by covering all sorts with sauce and to limit sauce to one meal a day. I will try this. We are actually off on hols this week and I am have half a suitcase full of Peter Rabbit pasta sauce in case we can't get anything good abroad!