Sneaking healthful ingredients into food has been a tactic used by moms since the first mom disguised vegetables from her picky eater by mashing them to make soup. Books like Deceptively Delicious, Stealth Health, and The Sneaky Chef offer ways to sneak nutrition into meals.

Hiding nutrition is helpful in the short-run, but I believe the goal should be for children to learn to enjoy the various textures and flavors of whole foods. There isn’t one good reason why whole foods shouldn’t be your youngster’s Preferred Food! Now is the perfect time to start. The holidays are over and we’ve all made resolutions to become healthier in 2009.

Taste for nutritious foods can be acquired at any age. The first step is to limit sugar and junk foods. Cooking delicious wholesome meals definitely will move your picky child in the direction of healthy eating. Casseroles are a way to meld flavors of healthful foods usually refused, like spinach, so that they are acceptable. (See  Spinach and Tomato Medley.) The spinach takes on the other flavors in the dish.

Super foods can be disguised to help build super strong kids, like Joshy.

Stealth health is valuable while you’re in the initial stages of transforming your child to a healthy eater. Stealth health can be especially helpful, if your picky eater is very limited in her choices, especially when it comes to vegetables.

Whole foods are a vital part of the healthy eater equation and should be integrated from the very beginning of your child’s eating transformation. Especially during the initial steps, you’ll want to slip them into things he’s already eating.

Often it’s as simple as changing from an inferior brand of bread to a nutritionally-packed one at your grocers. It’s supercharging a breakfast fruit smoothie with flax seed oil, barley green, or powdered acia berries or vitamin C. Other times, it’s making a healthful puréed vegetable soup for the vegetable-challenged child. Once veggies are no longer recognizable (because they have been puréed in the blender) a picky child is none-the-wiser she’s eaten something healthful. One of the most fun approaches, as well as challenging, is integrating snack and dessert items (try Brownie Surprise) they aren’t only tasty, but healthful.

Learn more about the Baby Bite Steps, buy the book: Baby Bites: Transforming a Picky Eater into a Healthy Eater today. Click Here.

Click Here for information about altered fats hiding in your food.

Click Here for Joann’s podcast, ‘What’s Cookin’ with Nonna?”