Sisi had rice cakes filled with beans. Timmy ate cheese grits. Juan ate a scrambled egg wrapped in a soft burrito. They all drank milk and nibbled on fruit – orange, peach, or a mango. What’s on your family table?
Every family has its own customs and culture, no matter how long they have lived in a place. Your family foods reflect your culture. Some foods may be different than what other people eat and enjoy. Some foods are about the same. That’s true about people too. We are alike. We are different.

Sharing family foods with others helps them
• Learn about your family’s customs and cultures.
• See how people are alike and different.
Trying foods from other cultures helps your family…
• Learn about and enjoy new foods.
• Get health benefits from different kinds of foods.
• Know and respect others.

Babies learn culture too.
Families use foods that are familiar and part of their culture when it is time to begin solid foods for babies. Breastfed babies taste different flavors all the time as the flavor of their mom’s milk changes according to what mom has been eating.

Cooking teaches
• Cooking together is fun family time and creates lifelong memories.
• Kitchen tasks give your child a chance to measure, count, and see food change. That’s early math and science
learning.
• Small muscle skills develop when your child uses his or her hands to help with kitchen tasks. Let children help
with simple, safe tasks like stirring or tasting.
• Clean up teaches responsibility. It’s part of many creative, messy things we do.

Cooking builds self-esteem
• Helping in the kitchen builds confidence and early skills of independence. Most children feel proud and
important when they help prepare food.
• Sharing family tasks helps them feel that they belong.

Using foods from other cultures for variety.
Enjoy all kinds of foods. When children learn to enjoy many foods, they have more choices for healthy eating
throughout life. Different foods promote growth and health in different ways.
• Food variety makes eating more interesting and fun.
• Ask about color, shape, feel, smell, sound, and taste, not whether you or your child “likes” a food.
• Go for one “bite” but do not force.
• Set an example and try new foods too.

Using WIC Foods in cultural dishes.
Attached recipes use foods that can be purchased with your WIC Card.
• Asian Dish: brown rice, onion, carrots, broccoli, red bell pepper.
• Mediterranean Dish: strawberries, blueberries, pineapple chunks, pineapple juice, low-fat yogurt.
• Latino Dish: canned low sodium black beans, whole wheat tortillas. (You can shred the block Colby and
Monterey Jack cheeses.)
• Middle Eastern Dish: garbanzo beans.

Celebrate time with your family creating a new recipe. Celebrate a world of flavors!