Your daughter is going through very typical toddler "picky eater" behavior. Little children are neophobic -- they have a fear of new foods.

To some extent, this is understandable. It may be an adaptive behavior for little children -- a way of avoiding potentially toxic foods. To a certain degree you have to learn to live with this characteristic, but there are many positive things you can do to help overcome it. In the long run, the bigger variety your daughter has in her diet, the healthier she is apt to be, since she is more likely to get the nutrients she needs.

First, it is helpful to know that research has shown that toddlers need several (10 or more) encounters with a new food before they are willing to eat it. Familiarity is key. Tasting the foods is important during those times, but if your daughter is gagging, then perhaps you will just have to stick with letting the food sit on her plate, or in the serving bowl. Continue to encourage her to take a "penny" taste. (That is a serving the size of a penny). Also, let her know that she can spit it out if she finds it horrible. So, in your strategy to get your daughter to eat a larger variety of food, serve those foods often that you would like her to eat. Children do eventually outgrow this stage. It just takes patience and understanding on your part.

Second, you also need to know, that toddlers do not eat much, and they do not eat consistent amounts from meal to meal. A morning totally devoid of food may be followed by a "good" dinner. Despite seemingly huge variations in consumption, toddlers tend to eat a consistent amount of calories from day to day. Its just that they eat them in random fashion. If you have allowed her all along to eat according to her own internal cues of hunger and satiety, than there is little you want to do to get her to eat more, because this just may be causing her to eat more than she needs, and may result in her becoming more dependent on outside cues. Therefore, your job is to provide the healthful variety of food in a toddler-friendly fashion and your daughter's job is to decide how much of it to eat. Do not feel complacent that the vitamin pill will take care of her lack of variety. Vitamin supplements can be helpful in times like these, but they should never be used as an excuse to not eat a wide variety of foods.

There are several things you can try to get her to increase the variety of foods she eats:

• Make sure your daughter is hungry at meal time. Limit between meal juices, don't use snacks as pacifiers or rewards, for many reasons, but also because they may ruin her appetite.
• Make mealtime a pleasant social time, focusing on your daughter and not on the food she may or may not be eating.
• Serve the new foods along with favorite foods.
• Make the foods toddler- friendly: not too dry or chewy (this is why many toddlers won't eat meat), bite size, small portions, colorful,
• Encourage your daughter to become a kitchen helper. For example, have her make a fruit salad with your help. She can slice the banana with a table knife (under your watchful eye), she can pour the open can of pineapple into the bowl, she can help to cut up the apple, and section the orange to go in. Or, have her make a muffin mix with you. Mixes generally only require the addition of an egg and some milk with a little stirring.
• Try hiding vegetables in food she likes. Add a little pureed vegetables into the cheese sauce when making the macaroni and cheese. If she likes bread, try making and serving pumpkin bread.

Talk with other parents on our Picky Eaters Message Board.