Be Savvy! How to Introduce New Foods to Your Family

Have you ever had someone rave on and on about a book, a movie or a restaurant creating huge expectations and then the real thing proves to be a let down?  It doesn’t necessarily mean the experience wasn’t good, just that it didn’t live up to the expectations that were created.  The same is true when transitioning your family to healthy food.  One thing I’ve learned while trying to transition my family to healthier options of their favorite foods is that while the healthier option may taste great, it will rarely taste exactly like the original.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome, just that it is different.

Often I would healthify a recipe and announce to our children that I’d made healthy this or healthy that.  Immediately they had a standard in their head I was required to meet and they would begin listing all the ways my new creation didn’t meet that standard.  Instead of judging my new recipe on it’s own merits, I had set it up to fail by comparison, when it was actually yummy in it’s own right.

Eventually I wisened up and one day when our kids came bounding in after school and asking what smelled yummy I smiled and said, “Cinnamon cookies.”  They ate them, and liked them.  Several weeks later on a snowy day I asked our daughter what I should bake. Her answer?  “Make those cinnamon cookies, they were good.”  So I laughed and told her I was glad they were good even though they didn’t come out the same as what I was trying for.  She thought for a minute and said, “Snickerdoodles?”  “Yes.”  She smiled and said, “They didn’t taste like snickerdoodles, but they were good.”  Voila!!

Be savvy in how you present a new item.  A great trick is to rename it something fancy.  Make the raw fruit ‘jam’ from this blog and announce that you are having ‘Fruit Sauce’ with breakfast.  Make a healthy version of no bake cookies and call them ‘Chocolate Heaven’ cookies. Make natural yeast crepes filled with real whipped cream and topped with chia jam and announce you are having Belgian Cream Crepes with Fruit Sauce.  I promise it works, well it works unless your recipe didn’t and in that case just slip them to the dog and no one will be the wiser.  Happy Creating!

Mellonee