What is Palatetraining?

In my my private nutrition practice I came across the following complaint often. “My child ate every single jar of vegetable baby food I offered, and then when I switched to real vegetables they stopped eating them. They won’t eat any vegetables now.  Help!!!”  After finally hearing this one too many times, I realized that figuring out why babies stop eating their vegetables once they transition from jarred or pouch baby food to regular vegetables was worth trying to better understand. 

 From conversations with my patients I identified 3 crucial points in weaning (feeding baby solids) that determine whether or not baby will accept vegetables long term.

1)    When, what, and how purees are offered to baby

2)   The transition from jarred or even fresh puree to real vegetables

3)   Repeated and frequent exposure to vegetables

When I became pregnant with my daughter, I became very interested in my own prenatal nutrition and how I planned to feed her.  In my research I read that the subtle flavors in amniotic fluid and breast milk could influence babies taste preferences. If I fed my daughter the pureed versions of the fresh foods that I had eaten during my pregnancy and breastfeeding then logically she should prefer eating these foods.  When the time came to start my daughter on puree, I first examined and tasted commercially prepared jarred or pouch baby food. It did not look or taste the same as the food I was eating.  At the time the Beaba babycook had recently hit the market, I bought one, and committed myself to making her fresh purees, and embarked on my Palatetraining journey.

Using my medical knowledge of how baby’s brain and digestive system develop, I designed my Palatetraining method as a gentle way of getting through these tricky transition points to successfully raise a vegetable loving child.

Palatetraining is different than other baby feeding techniques for the following reasons:

1) A strategic list of purees to offer in order to gently ease baby into the amazing world of food

2) Vegetable Purees are served independently, never mixed or blended with fruit

3) Food is presented side by side on a flat plate, like paint on a painter’s palette

4) Describes how to seamlessly transition baby from puree to whole vegetables

If you are interested to learn more about Palatetraining please follow me on Instagram @Palatetraining.  My eBook Palatetraining: How to Raise a Vegetable Lover will soon be available in my "Shop" section.  Until then, If you start at the bottom of my Instagram account and scroll up you can follow exactly how I Palatetrained my son.

For more information on Palatetraining please see my Blog on the Huffington Post Healthy Living Section: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-laura-lefkowitz/ or www.Palatetraining.com.  I’m also on facebook at Palatetraining by Dr. Laura Lefkowitz and Twitter @DrLLefkowitz.

See my latest interview on Palatetraining at Vanessa & Melissa Diapers and Lipgloss  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyfVQqG1i4w