Surprise Your Mouth Philosophy

In 1986 our school began a new snack concept called "Surprise your Mouth". The children are encouraged to take two bites of the snack and are told "The first bite might surprise your mouth so much that you can't taste it so take another bite and that is the one you can taste". Often many bites follow. The surprise to the parents is that the children become willing to try almost anything our creative parents prepare.

Our school assumes that your child comes to school well nourished and our snack is not a substitute for breakfast or lunch. Therefore, we don't have to think in terms of our children liking or finishing the snack, but rather as a time for them to experience new and interesting foods.

When planning for snack, creativity is the key. Children can easily become accustomed to sweet snacks and unwilling to try new and different food. Therefore, cookies, cake, cupcakes, pudding, candy as well as muffins and quick breads are not appropriate. Fruit cocktail, chips, french fries and tater tots are also discouraged.

As an aid to planning snack, refer to the monthly curriculum. A snack could be planned around monthly theme, shape, or colors. There is no need to prepare elaborate food, just use your imagination. Prepare enough food for one serving per child and adult - approximately 30 servings. Whenever possible prepare individual servings using paper cups or plates.

The following is a list of suggestions for snack:

• Vegetables - raw, cooked (corn-on-the-cob, artichokes, squash), stir-fry vegetables

• Fruit salad, fruit skewers, fresh fruit of any kind

• Potato salad

• Lettuce salad

• Sandwiches - egg, ham, turkey, chicken, tuna, cream cheese, pimento, watercress etc. - cut into finger sandwiches, or use cookie cutters for fun shapes

• Soups of all kinds

• Nuts of all kinds

• Deviled eggs

• Burritos, tacos, taquitos, quesadillas

• Pizza

• Chex party mix

• Rice cakes - with peanut butter or cream cheese, raisins, fruit

• Macaroni and cheese

• Spaghetti

• Popcorn and popcorn mixes with peanuts, raisin, pretzels

More Surprise Your Mouth Ideas

Some creative moms put a fun, new twist on dogs in a blanket this month by adding “stoplight dip.” Yellow mustard dollops were sandwiched between red and green ketchup dollops. If you missed Open House, you missed some more yummy and creative snacks! From fruit skewers to ham and cheese biscuits, the kids were surprising those tongues left and right. Hard-boiled eggs were made extra fun cut in half with sails constructed of American cheese on a toothpick. These edible boats floated in a bed of goldfish. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches tasted so much better when shaped like hearts, as did the celery  topped with peanut butter and dried fruit. Ice cream cones filled with nutritious plain yogurt and fruit chunks, and sprinkled with granola made an especially tempting snack as well.

My Two Cents on Surprise Your Mouth by Kam Lawrence

How many of you Parent #4’s have put a lot of thought and effort into a fun, healthy snack only to see half of it thrown away? I know it’s happened to me a couple of times. My oven fried sweet potato fries were a big flop, although well received by the adults. If you told someone from India that a big problem we face with American toddlers is throwing away half the food we serve them, they’d think we were nuts. I think it’s safe to assume that picky eater syndrome is strictly a third world battle, where parents are overwhelmed by pressure from marketers of nutritionally depleted foods. We encounter crackers and cookies in the shapes of teddy bears or Pokemon, Mc Donald’s on every corner (with free Disney toys nonetheless), and supermarkets full of food loaded with sugar. How can we compete with that? A dinosaur shaped chicken nugget or this healthy carrot stick? Hmm, even I (who have outgrown animal shaped food and have a fair understanding of basic nutrition), am tempted by the “artery clogger.”

Who ever brainstormed this crazy Surprise Your Mouth idea was truly brave to confront all the parents who have understandably thrown up their hands and allowed sugary food as a regular snack. Unhealthy foods bombard our children in TV commercials and fast food restaurants, not to mention their snack buddy’s lunch box. Could you imagine sending your kid to school with a cut up apple, when his snack table is scattered with Kraft Lunchables* and artificially colored, overly sweetened, blue applesauce? Surprise Your Mouth not only eliminates that problem, but it exposes your child to foods you may not have tried serving her at home. Two snacks served at Co-op immediately come to mind that my child now loves. Unfortunately, one of them has about the same nutritional value as the package it came in. Nevertheless, without Co-op, Hayden wouldn’t have discovered the excitement of making a snowman face on a cheese covered rice cake.

Many nutritional experts agree that forcing a child to eat is a no-win situation. They also say that a toddler needs to be exposed to a new food up to twelve times before he might decide to eat it. I’m now a believer of that theory! My three year-old asked for AND ATE some broccoli today! I stopped offering it to him after many refused enticements over a year ago, but continued to eat it in front of him regularly. That is the other key element in encouraging healthy foods. Eat healthy food in front of your child! Ever since he could grunt and point, Hayden has only wanted a banana if it was the one I was eating.

Surprise Your Mouth is such a great tool in our struggle to ensure healthy eating habits. Use this tool and resist the temptation to serve Mac and Cheese at Co-op. If you can’t stand the thought of wasting food, make tiny portions of the “new food” accompanied by a sure thing, like popcorn. Or think of it this way… how many of our natural resources are wasted on the packaging of most ready to eat kid snacks? When you’re out of ideas, look at the suggestions in your Co-op handbook or recipes featured in our newsletters. There are so many creative moms in our co-op with great ideas for nutritious snacks. Borrow their ideas! Learn from other moms how to turn eggs into pirate ships, quesadillas into faces and cheese into racecars. Find out what makes eating healthy foods fun for your child. I wish you all could have seen how excited our pre-schoolers were about eating an apple the day that Pat Elbert brought in an apple corer and let them turn the handle. Just the way a food is served can make all of the difference. Resist buying the over-processed, vitamin-depleted food, full of sodium, chemicals, hydrogenated oils, and preservatives. What’s so “surprising” about all of the kids gobbling up Bagel Bites? Does it really take that much more imagination to serve raw vegetables with dip? It might just be the thirteenth time for your child, and she may decide she likes red bell pepper after all!

Disclaimer:  I don’t claim to be a “health nut” by any definition of the term. In fact, I’m popping chocolate kisses in my mouth as I type. I think Happy Meals have their place, and the Happy in Happy Meal actually refers to the joy felt by parents who don’t have to cook dinner or listen to their children whine. My point is that we should all make an honest effort to expand our children’s diets in the context of Surprise Your Mouth. I believe that healthy, natural eating is a worthwhile goal that we should all strive for, however unattainable it may be for chocolate-filled mortals like myself.