Fifteen exposures, and what they mean
Ten times. Fifteen. Sometimes twenty. The number turns up at the health visitor, in a parenting group or halfway down a search page. It sounds like an instruction: keep offering, and the child will eat on the right attempt.
The calendar has nothing to do with it.
After the fourteenth no
A child is not fourteen fifteenths of the way to broccoli. Numbers like these describe groups of children; they do not set a date for one child's dinner.
Pushing harder will not speed up the count either. Fifteen insistent offers in two weeks make two weeks of the same argument. By the end, the child may recognise a green bean by the question "will you try it?" before they have looked at the bean itself.
How food becomes familiar
At first, the new food may simply sit on the table. Another day, the child moves it. Later, they smell it. Perhaps they taste it one day.
After that meal, the adult knows more than they did after a quick no. The food is a little less new, but there is still no schedule for what comes next.
A green bean at the edge of a plate is still a green bean. Add an audience and a required bite, and it quickly becomes the opening round of a negotiation.
What to write down after dinner
Did the child stay in the room? Sit at the table? Touch the food, put it on their plate, lick it? A whole dinner fits between "no from the doorway" and "no from the table". That difference is worth keeping, even when neither evening ends in a bite.
Taste a Day has no countdown to broccoli. It has five steps: Looked, Touched, Smelled, Licked and Ate it. Today the answer can be Looked. Tomorrow brings a new evening.
Taste a Day is a game and a habit tracker. It does not diagnose or treat feeding disorders, ARFID or any other condition. If eating is affecting your child’s health or growth, talk to a paediatrician. We are happy to be the thing you do between those appointments.