How do you get your toddler to eat meat?

[Mine]

Hi there

I'm having real trouble getting my 17month old DS to eat meat, so i'm looking for some inspiration on how others may have done it....

He loved meat when it was spoon fed to him, but i haven;t done that in a long time and i just can;t get him to feed himself any kind of meat. He doesn't like it because he doesn't have any molars yet to chew

Any tips/advice gratefully appreciated, thanks.

when you say spoon fed do you mean purees and babyfood? would shepherds pie and mushed up meat work?

1. Chop it up very small and mix it in with the veg;
2. have a sauce so it's not too chewy and dry - could be with cauliflower cheese, or something, not necessarily gravy;
3. give lasagne, moussaka, shepherd's pie-type meals using mince, which is very well disguised;
4. make sure it's tasty using garlic, herbs, spices: I don't blame kids not wanting to eat food if it's really bland.

Good luck.

Ds never ate meat. I'm quite strict on the whole "you eat what you are given" thing, but even i couldn't watch a child gagging I never worried about it, but i was brought up in a vegetarian house so knew to replace the protein with other things. The only meat he will eat now is a chicken drumstick or thigh. He will also eat chicken if its cooked in the slow cooker and is not chewy or dry. Mince is a definite no-no, i've even tried making home-made burgers to make it more appealing but it didn't work.

thanks for the quick response.

Littleducks i weaned him on homemade purees, he has always had a brilliant appetite, sheppards pie, lasagne etc were his favourites but he doesn't like it now because it isn;t mushed up!!

He picks out the mince in the bolognese or anything i make with minced meat. He can;t chew bits of meat... ends up sucking it and then spitting it out

I can just about get him to eat the meat in sausages, but i know can;t keep giving him that all the time!!

I'll try cutting meat into tiny bits and hopefully that will do the trick.

I just don;t want to mush is for him.

hmm tricky, when did you stop mushing things? meat soup?

We've found quorn mince much better than meat mince - much softer and easier to chew, but of course its not actually meat :-)

Have you a slow cooker? We can now get our 2.5 yr old to eat meat, as we cook it in the slow cooker. Chicken is the easiest to eat - red meats & pork are a lot harder to chew and we still struggle with those.

Sausages and burgers are a favourite in this house, and meatballs - and they dont have to be unhealthy ones.

The other thing we did was use processed foods once or twice a week, such as fish fingers and turkey golden drummers - this way he was learning about chunky meat/fish and eating some. After a while we could start putting a chicken stew or fresh fish in front of him and he started eating it.