How does he know?

I'm going to look at last night as an interesting learning experience because otherwise it was just frustrating.

Last night, as usual, I fed Henry dinner around 6PM. Since I knew he wouldn't eat anything after we took the challah out, I gave him his food before we made kiddush. I gave him a nice array of food - roasted squash, turkey meatballs, and cauliflower. To my delight, he cautiously tried each food item. In the end, he negated the squash and meatballs, but he did eat a few pieces of cauliflower...and then of course he ate about half a challah roll. I wish he would have eaten more protein, but I really couldn't complain.

After dinner, we were invited out to a dessert party. We bundled Henry up and took him up the block. As soon as we got into the house, and he saw the dessert table, he started signing for "more". My husband made a dessert plate (mostly for himself), and Henry immediately started grabbing at it. He put every dessert in his mouth without a single hesitation. I get that kids like dessert...I love dessert, so how could I not expect Henry to as well? Though I don't give Henry cakes and cookies on a regular basis, if someone offers them to him, or if other people around him are eating dessert, I always let him have some (one could argue that on these occasions he gets too much dessert, but I'm trying my best!). My feeling is that I don't want him to feel deprived and then later on in life eat sweets whenever he can get his hands on them. I realize that could happen anyway, but that's my attitude on it...at least for now. Anyway, my issue last night was that I just couldn't understand how he knew that he would like everything on his dessert plate, but meanwhile at dinner, he played with each piece of food for a good minute before he even put it in his mouth! Now of course I'm trying to figure out how I can use this information to get him to eat healthy foods. I don't have an answer, but I just really had to share...any ideas?

Happy and (mostly) healthy eating!