Actionable steps to take to encourage your children to eat vegetables
Getting your child to eat veggies can be a real challenge. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) children 2-3 years old should eat about 1 cup of vegetables and 1 cup of fruit a day. For children ages 4-8 years old they should eat about 1&1/2 cup of vegetables and 1&1/12 cup of fruit a day. To get off on the right start, continue reading for 7 crucial steps to get your children to eat vegetables and continue to do so as they grow older.
After talking with a few of my mom friends, I realized my kids are pretty good about eating vegetables and well.. eating in general. Here are some things I’ve tried over the years to get them to happily eat vegetables.
1. Delay introduction to sweets as long as you can and if you already have, strictly limit it
A lot of baby foods focus on sweet fruit puree options. Instead consider, choosing sweeter vegetables like carrots and peas. Avocado is also another great first food.
The ideas is, the later your children experience sweet foods, the more open they will be to experiencing different veggies that are less tasty now.
As your toddler gets older, I also recommend refraining from giving them sweetened drinks. If you are able to delay or limit the introduction of juice pouches, watered down orange juice, or even sweetener drops, the more likely they will stick to hydrating with water and milk instead.
2. Introduce a variety of veggies at once
Restaurants like Souplantation was a really good place to take toddlers. They allow you to introduce small amounts of lot of different veggies at once (which you can still do at home, just takes more effort) and the kids love trying them out.
Souplantation visits or creating medley plates of a ton of options showed us that our son loved beets, olives, garbanzo beans, carrots, pickles, and mushrooms. Our daughter on the other hand really liked edamame, olives, peas, string beans, cucumbers, and broccoli. Although it might be a little more work the first few times, it can give you a great starting point of focusing their home meals around the veggies they didn’t mind eating.
I don’t recommend introducing any raw vegetables in the beginning. It would best to steam all the veggies so they are soft. Often times, if the texture is too chewy or the sweetness of the vegetable hasn’t come out from cooking, they will spit it out and not be open to trying it again for awhile.
3. Season and sauce up the food
When it comes to veggies, I’m a believer of a little bad is ok for the greater good. Meaning, when things are starting to fail, try adding cheese, seasoning, or sauces to the vegetables. Be mindful of the salt, but in general if it’s seasoned well, they will eat it up.
If your kids are into sour vinegary tastes like pickles, try cold cucumbers seasoned in rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. Korean Kimchi is also a surprising favorite. It’s spicy so you can introduce them rinsed in water at first.
4. Finely chop the vegetables for your child
Now if your child is still unwilling to eat veggies, my last resort is always to finely chop into a stir fry, soup, stew, or a savory pancake. This way they can’t pick it out and it masks the fact that veggies are inside. It reduces the fiber aspect of vegetables, but I still think it’s a great alternative.
5. Correlate something amazing they do with eating veggies earlier
Now comes the more psychological aspects of encouraging your kids to eat vegetables.
My favorite thing to do is link something my kids do with veggies. So for example, if my son shows me randomly that he can jump really high (in his mind anyway) I exaggerate with a response like, “O wow! You are jumping so super duper high!! I think it’s because of all the veggies you ate at lunch!!” He will look at me puzzled, then jump again. And I will respond again with, “Yes, it has to be the carrots you ate! It’s helping you jump like a super hero. That is the highest I’ve ever seen you jump! And wait a minute.. did you also grow taller?!”
It literally works every time. Also, don’t forget to emphasize and remind how tall and high he jumped at meal times to encourage veggie eating in the moment.
6. Pretend feed their toys
Try the age-old move of pretending the spoon is an airplane and pretend feed their toys first. The idea here is to make eating fun and playful. It might be the idea that they don’t want their toys to eat their food and they get jealous in the moment or they love playing pretend with you and their toys together.
7. Do not give in to snacks if they refuse to eat their vegetables
Ok this one is the hardest step.
I will start by saying, there will be times you need to pick your battles. However, if you can hold your ground and you have the energy for it, do not give in to snacks if they are refusing their food. These little guys, if you give an inch, they will take a mile. If I crack once, it just goes on forever. So when they say they don’t want their veggies or food, say “ok” and walk away. No substitutes.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if for 2 of 3 meals, I know they ate well rounded, then I will let it slide for the 3rd meal of the day or also if I’m just too plain exhausted for battle I will allow snacking. But I do think, kids know the boundaries and they know what I will and won’t let them do. It really is up to us to set that rule. It’s just, SO HARD to set rules all the time as a parent too, because you don’t want to deal with the fighting and whining and tantrumming either.
If you have enough room, try not to store snacks in places your kids have easy access to. It makes it much easier for them to whine about it because they know its available within their reach.
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