Picky Eaters, The Finale!

We’re at the final of our Ten Tips for Getting Kids to Eat More Veggies. The final “E” in our mnemonic is for “EasyPeasie,” and gives us a chance to re-tell you the story of how we started all this dried veggie funny business in the first place!

When my sister had to return to work and switch her youngest to formula, we didn’t want to lose the opportunity to “palate prime” him during infancy. Pediatric and nutrition studies show that infants and toddlers have food preferences that are largely influenced by mom’s diet – both prenatally when baby is in utero; and through the foods that mom consumes while breastfeeding.

This “palate priming” happens via transfer of tiny parts of flavors and even scents to amniotic fluid and breastmilk. Formula fed babies, unfortunately, don’t get those continued flavor exposures postnatally.

In our research and review of the literature, we learned that the earlier and more often kids are exposed to vegetable flavors, the more likely they are to take to those flavors and maintain those preferences throughout childhood.

Because my sister’s baby was going to be transitioned off of breastmilk and onto formula, our desire was to continue “palate priming” him for vegetable flavors. We dried lots of different vegetables and ground them into powder in order to mix them into his bottles and infant foods. Though we didn’t know it at the time, this was also the infancy of EasyPeasie.

As her boys grew and transitioned to a variety of solid foods, we continued to make different vegetable powder blends; discretely “veggie hacking” and palate priming with all of their meals. Positive feedback from other moms and requests for us to make our blends for their families eventually prompted us to bring our blends to you all in 2015 as EasyPeasie.

We are so pleased to offer EasyPeasie Veggie Blends to you as an easy and stress-free way to help warm your kids’ palates to veggies. Parents and pediatricians know that kids need repeated exposures to new foods (especially vegetables) before taking to them in flavor and texture.

EasyPeasie is here as another option in your toolkit to get those repeated veggie exposures in. Each teaspoon of EasyPeasie is equal to a toddler serving of vegetables – though remember that EasyPeasie is not a veggie substitute, supplement, or vitamin.

Think of EasyPeasie as a palate training tool and a bridge. Our ultimate goal, like that of all parents, is to get kids to eat both an adequate number and variety of whole vegetables.

Let’s train our kids' palates in the way we want them to go!

We can do it – it’s EasyPeasie!

Sincerely,

 The Peas