I received an email from a fussy eater last week looking for advice on how to combat fussy eating and I thought I should share my thoughts with all of you also. Here it is:
"Thank you for your email and I hope that I can help. It's great that you want to get into cooking and preparing everything from scratch. Where there's a will there is always a way!
From your email I presume that you are cooking for one, so you only have to consider your own likes and dislikes (a lot easier than you might expect). I sense that you really don't get any joy out of eating your own food, so if I'm right it's not hard to work out that you don't enjoy preparing and cooking food either for that reason.
Having something delicious to come home to cook and even reheat the next day is only possible if you excite your palate. Trying new flavours whether they are vegetables or full meals is key to the solution. Make a list of the foods you like and that you don't like and then write a list of ingredients that you think you might like and try to incorporate these ingredients into your meals everyday. The only way to increase your food palate is to try new foods and to keep eating them until you get used to the taste and texture. For an example my son didn't eat fish until a few years ago but he made himself eat it again and again and now he eats any type of fish you give him!
Are you a confident cook? If you're not I would advise you to take a cookery class so you can get excited about food and this way you will get to try new flavours that you wouldn't normally have.
Try following these steps too:
- Make a list of all the 'restaurant' meals you like. Don't do this when you have just finished a meal as you'll be too full up to think about the next meal.
- Tick those that you feel are healthy or with a little adjustments can be made healthy.
- Find similar recipes online or through Sian's Plan and try to cook them.
- If you plan on making a meal plan, I would start small and just plan a couple of days until you get more confident with the food you eat.
- Try new recipes and new foods every week, making sure to add these new foods to your list both the ones you like and dislike.
- Over time your list will increase and you will become more adventurous with your choices.
- Keep trying the foods you think you don't like, eventually your palate will get a taste for them and you will start to enjoy these foods."
If any readers have any other advice which they have used to increase their own palate please share with us. I have more tips on my other blog at http://magazine.siansplan.com/