Question

Question 4 5 pts How do infants learn food preferences? How can parents encourage good eating habits in their infants?

Answer 1

Food preferences for the babies starts from the womb of the mother as the amniotic fluid consists the flavours of the food mother has taken.

Even during breast feeding they have been adapted to taste many types of flavoured milk according to the mothers diet.So they learn food preferences from the early ages it self.This is the main source which makes them to continue the choice of selecting the foods.Children should be given most preferred foods, if the parents force them to take certain food items, those foods become their unpreferred foods.

Parents can encourage good eating habits in infants by different methods.They are

• Make the baby to try to new different textures of food
• Try not to force the foods that baby doesn't like but always make them eat in a different way
• Give them all types of veggies decorating them colourfully
• Get the attention of baby over food by serving in a different methods such as mashing, squishing
• Also make babu to get interested over food and appreciate on eating by hugs and kisses.
• Regularly schedule the meals and snacks for every 3 to 4 hrs.
• Provide a variety of balanced meals
• Introduce new foods 1 at a time and should not dump all the varieties.
• Make a habit of playing after eating food which fulfils physical activity.