How Palate Training helps overweight Children

Across the world more than 22 million children under the age of 5 are severely overweight. To try and buck the trend kids should be educated about their tastebuds to save their future waistlines.

That's according to Mitzy Wilson and Louise Rutten from the charitable organisation The Good Food Village Trust. They believe the way forward is to introduce palate training.

Many parents have never heard of palate training which involves teaching children how to appreciate their food.

Louise Rutten said "Parents should be thinking about palate training from the time when weaning has been established. We want to give children from a very young age the experience of tasting on your palate and knowing what your palate is. Everybody associates it with wine and how it tastes in different parts of your mouth.

We want children to not look at a carrot and decide they don't like it. They should put it on their tongue or the side of their mouth, sniff it even. We're not advocating them playing with their food but we are saying let's have an experience with food."

Mitzy Wilson said you should teach your child to appreciate food from an early age.

"It's got to start from when you're weaning, introducing them to as many varied foods as possible. You're in control, you're the parent, before they go to school you can dictate healthy eating habits right from an early age so it's up to us parents to get it right.

Believe it or not one in four children are overweight by the age of 3 and that is really shocking. I personally think it's because it's very easy to feed your children on pizzas, burgers, chicken nuggets, chips and think that it doesn't matter. They are learning bad habits from a very early age.

My children luckily are good eaters but I have so many children who come back to tea with them who won't eat so many foods that I try to offer them, it's a real problem," she said.

Many children can be fussy eaters but Mitzy believes the problem can be overcome.

"Children do have food fads but just keep re-introducing foods. It takes about 10 to 15 times before children will actually accept a new food.

If you can sit down and eat with your family, I think it's important for them to be eating the same food that you are eating. Fish fingers are okay to have occassionally but why aren't they eating the casserole or the shepherd's pie or even the curry that you are eating."

For more information about palate training look up The Good Food Village Trust's website. Or, contact your local health advisor or doctor about starting up a healthy diet for you and your children to enjoy together.