As preschoolers, I got my kids to plan one meal a week. It was easy; they picked one main dish, one veggie and one fruit to complete the meal. (In my view, it was at least one meal a week they'd actually eat.) In the beginning we had a lot of macaroni and cheese; cheese pizza; lots of carrot sticks and apples too. But it gave each child an incentive to participate in food choices!

Gradually, they made new choices, experimenting with food. Meal planning gave them all ingredients to choose themselves when we went grocery shopping and I encouraged them to pick the best choices by reading labels.

Because they planned it, they had more interest in helping me prepare the meals, and we made a big deal out of who chooses our meal that night. Later they started to help cook the meals and now as teenagers, young adults, they know how to plan and prepare meals. Admittedly, their specialties are things like homemade cheesy-vegetarian pizza, and macaroni and cheese from scratch with a little Gouda, but knowing what goes into a meal helped in many ways.

I think my kids are still picky eaters, but they appreciate anyone's efforts to cook for them and they know the best meals come from the effort of choosing and preparing your own main dish+veggie+fruit and sharing it with your family.

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