How many times does a child need to try a new food?

Most children need 8 to 15 tastes of a new food before they accept it, sometimes more. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts it at "as many as 10 or more times", the CDC at 8 to 10, and the trials behind both used a daily taste for 12 to 14 days. Your child does not hate carrots. Your child has met a carrot 4 times and needs about 10 more introductions. The whole picture is in how to get kids to eat vegetables.

How many times is enough, and where 10 to 15 comes from

No single study counted to a precise number, which is why the sources disagree slightly. The AAP tells parents a child may need to try something "as many as 10 or more times". The CDC says 8 to 10 exposures. The trials that both draw on used a fixed schedule: in a home trial with parents of children aged 2 to 6, one small taste of a disliked vegetable every day for 14 days left most children liking it more and eating more of it than children whose parents got nutrition advice alone (Wardle, 2003). A later trial used 12 daily tastes (Cooke, 2011).

The mechanism underneath is older and simpler. Two-year-olds prefer the foods they have tasted most often, and preference rises with the number of tastes (Birch, 1982). Nothing is being persuaded. The tongue is being introduced to something, repeatedly, until it stops counting as new.

So the honest answer is a range, not a target: 8 to 15 tastes, sometimes more. Bitter vegetables take longer than sweet ones. A food refused three times is still early in that range, not a settled dislike, which is worth knowing because three refusals is about where most foods get quietly written off.

What counts as a taste

Contact with the flavour counts. A lick counts. A bite that comes straight back out counts, because the flavour has already made contact with the tongue. A bite that gets chewed and swallowed counts once, the same as the lick. The amount is not the point and never was.

Some things that feel like progress do not count yet:

• Looking at it, smelling it, poking it. Real steps, and they usually come first, but the tongue has not been introduced.
• A vegetable hidden in the sauce. It gets vegetables in on a bad day, which is a result. It teaches nothing about the flavour, because the flavour was the part you hid.
• A taste under pressure. A bite delivered after five minutes of negotiation teaches your child that this food comes with an argument attached.

One thing does count twice, though: the same vegetable in a different form. Raw carrot and boiled carrot are two different foods to a toddler, with different textures and different flavours. Counting them separately is not pedantry, it explains why a child who refuses cooked cauliflower will eat a raw floret with a dip.

How to get a picky eater to try new foods

This is the method the trials actually used, and it is smaller than most advice:

• One piece, on its own saucer, next to the plate rather than on it. A small taste can be faced. A portion is a fight.
• The same food, at the same meal, most days. Two weeks with one vegetable beats two weeks of variety.
• Say it once. "That one is your taste." Then stop talking about it.
• Eat it yourself, without announcing that you are doing so.
• Accept every outcome. A lick, a bite back out, or nothing at all are all fine tonight.
• Mark it when there was contact, in front of your child, and move on to the rest of dinner.

In the UK this method is published for parents as Tiny Tastes. The name matters less than the shape: small, daily, marked, unremarked upon.

Reward the taste, never the plate

Rewarding the taste works and holds. In a British trial, children who received a sticker or praise for tasting a vegetable ate more of it after twelve days, and still did three months later. Tasting with nothing to mark it had faded by then (Cooke, 2011).

Advice that warns against rewarding children around food is right about one half of this. Paying in pudding, or rewarding an empty plate, makes the pudding more valuable and the vegetable less so. The distinction is what gets rewarded: the bite, never the amount, and never with food. A tick on a chart, a sticker, a card in an app. It marks that a taste happened. Your child is not tasting for the sticker, your child can see that tasting counts.

Counting without turning it into a project

A chart on the fridge is enough: one column per food, one tick per taste. Two rules keep it from becoming homework. Your child can see it, and it only ever goes up. There is no mark for a no, because a no is normal and does not need recording.

Look at the chart after two weeks rather than after each dinner. Dinner-by-dinner, tasting feels like it is going nowhere. Over 14 days, the pattern is usually visible: the piece disappears more often, the fuss around it gets shorter.

One question does most of the work at the end of the day: what did you taste today. Not what did you eat, not whether the plate was finished. Tasting is the behaviour you want, so it is the thing you ask about.

When the count stalls

Fifteen tastes and nothing has shifted happens, and it is usually the form rather than the food. Try raw instead of cooked, roasted instead of boiled, a different shape, a dip alongside. Then park that food for a month and bring it back without comment. A break is not a failure, it is the cheapest thing you can change.

Check for pressure as well. "Just one bite" is pressure, and so is a plate that stays on the table until it is dealt with. Pressure is what makes a food expensive to be near, and a food that is expensive to be near stops getting tasted at all.

There is a line where this stops being about counting. Talk to your doctor if your child is losing weight or not growing, eats fewer than about 20 different foods, refuses whole groups such as all vegetables or all fruit, or gags or panics at new food. That is a different situation from the one this page describes, and there is help for it.

How Project Food keeps the count

Project Food is an app on your phone for the whole family. After dinner you tap what each person tasted, and every plant becomes a card in the family collection: silver after 5 tastes, gold after 10. The count is the point. You can see that broccoli is at 7 without keeping it in your head, which is the difference between giving up at three and carrying on to twelve. No diet, no advice about weight, no promises. A record of tastes, and something to talk about at the table.

Worth remembering

• 8 to 15 tastes, sometimes more. The AAP says 10 or more, the CDC says 8 to 10.
• A lick counts. A bite that comes back out counts. The amount never mattered.
• The same food in a different form starts its own count.
• One piece, same meal, most days, no commentary, for two weeks before you judge.
• Reward the taste, never the clean plate, and never with food.
• Stalled at 15: change the form, then park it for a month.