Whenever my extended family is around my house at mealtime, they are always joking about the foods I serve my daughter. While most 2-year olds are eating chicken fingers and French fries for lunch, a grilled cheese with black beans and edamame is more typical for her. I've tried to introduce her to a wide variety of foods (particularly vegetables) so that she learns to enjoy them. So far, it's been working.

Although there are certain foods she doesn't like (despite my repeated attempts to get her to eat them), there are foods she eats now that she didn't like the first few times we tried. Researchers have found that it can take 8 to 15 attempts before children will accept certain foods as part of their diet. Speaking from experience, it takes a lot of patience to unsuccessfully offer foods that many times. When you're rushing to get dinner on the table, it's much easier to go with something you know your family will eat, versus having to listen to complaining kids who won't take a bite of their meal. But in the end, the struggle might be worth it.

Research from the Monell Chemical Senses Center (a non-profit research institute in Philadelphia) shows that what kids are willing to eat at age 9 is directly related to what they were eating at age 2. They have found that "A taste for salt develops at about 4 months of age, but acquiring a taste for bitter foods, such as spinach and broccoli, requires repeated exposure." Preferences begin to develop even earlier than this, as babies learn to like certain food tastes through the breastmilk of their mothers.

Some restaurants are even jumping on the bandwagon, expanding their kids' menus to include a wider variety of healthy options. Parents of young children know there are a few standard items on most kids' menus, and usually not much else: grilled cheese, hamburgers, chicken fingers and maybe, if you're lucky, spaghetti and meatballs. Then the meal usually comes with fries and a soda.

Most of those options are frustrating to me. So I find myself ordering something healthy I know my daughter will eat and splitting it with her instead. That way she's exposed to a wider variety of foods, instead of learning the two different ways to cook a grilled cheese each time we go out to eat. I can't say that many restaurants where I live are expanding their menu options, but it's nice to know that trend might reach my area at some point.

Do you (or did you) try to offer your children a wide variety of foods throughout life? Do you think it has made a difference in their food choices or taste preferences? How do you (or did you) handle eating out with young kids while still trying to be healthy?