Getting your child to eat vegetables
Getting your child to eat vegetables
Did your child eat a variety of vegetables when they were a baby and now only eat one or two select veggies? Often a stress for many parents is that their child doesn’t eat any or many vegetables
The truth is your child doesn’t HAVE to eat vegetables to meet their nutritional needs, especially if they eat fruit. A goal would be for them to enjoy vegetables eventually, but it doesn’t always happen right away.
Rather than forcing one more bite or bribing with dessert etc. in aim for kids to eat veggies we want kids to be in charge of what they put in their mouths and learn to love vegetables on their own terms. Some tips to help with this include:
Serve them often: repeated, low-pressure exposures. If you want your child to enjoy vegetables, it is important to serve them often. Prepare them in different, tasty ways. Raw carrot alone might not go down well, but with a dip like guacamole or hummus it might be much more tasty.
Eat vegetables yourself: kids learn to live by modelling those around them. They need to see others eating a less familiar food for them to feel like it is safe and want to try it too.
Interaction: allow them to interact with vegetables in fun, low-pressure ways. Perhaps they can help wash and tear lettuce leaves or cut cucumbers with a kid knife. Maybe they can help pick out a vegetable of a different colour of the rainbow next time you are at the supermarket, or help plant some veggies in the garden.
Eat the rainbow: different coloured fruits and vegetables give us different nutrients. If your child happily eats fruit then focus on offering variety, or changing which fruit you buy each week will automatically give
them a range of vitamins and minerals.
Deconstructed meals: serve the family meal deconstructed in the middle of the table, encouraging your child to serve what foods they want on their plate. This gives them a feeling of independence but also is a good way to expose different vegetables and model serving and eating them yourself.
Time: this is a process, and each day will look different for each child. Try not to get discouraged, establishing healthy habits will benefit their ongoing wellbeing!