While babies and toddlers usually smash back pureed veggies, when it comes getting older children to eat 5 serves a day it’s almost a mission impossible. If they see you eating well they might mimic this behaviour, if not try some of these sneakier ways to get them to consume vegetables.
Ways to get your kids to enjoy veggies without moaning their heads off.
1. Keep them crisp and cool
Growing up many of our parents used to boil our vegetables to within an inch of their lives leaving us with soggy, flaccid and tasteless veggies that we HAD to eat. Try offering your kids a raw but peeled carrot as an afternoon or pre-dinner snack, frozen peas is also another hit with many kids – especially in summer.
Hint: If they refuse raw veggies then tell them they mustn’t be as ‘starving’ as they claim to be.
2. Try the sneaky approach
If you’re sick of kids who shut up shop and refuse to even sample the delicious vegetable dish you have spent two hours preparing, don’t give up. Find another way to get veggies into them, a favourite is pureeing or grating zucchini, carrot or cauliflower into pasta bakes, spaghetti bolognese or a cheese sauce, in fact you can hide veggies in so many dishes! Try our One Pot Spaghetti Bolognese Recipe.
3. Change the way they think about vegetables.
Instead of making them something they have to eat before they leave the dinner table, incorporate veggies into their school lunches so that fresh and raw vegetables became a normal part of their diet and not just at dinner time. Fresh baby tomatoes, beans, carrots, celery and broccoli are all delicious and mess-free snacks suitable for lunches.
4. Grow your own veggie garden 
Nothing encourages growing minds to try new things like getting them involved in planting seeds, watering them and watching them grow into food they can eat. Cherry tomatoes usually grow well as do a few varieties of lettuces. Check the back of seed packages for details on how and where to grow.
5. Don’t make it a drama
While it’s wise to enforce the ‘one bite rule’ eg they must have one bite, don’t force them to finish eating every single piece of corn or pea on their plate. It’s creating unhealthy eating habits and negative emotions towards vegetables. Parenting is about picking your battles and the veggie one just isn’t worth it.
Tip: Explain the nutritional value of vegetables and how they are like petrol for a car, they are the fuel we need to grow and be healthy!
6. Make vegetables tasty
While drowning broccoli and leeks in cheese sauce does make them tastier, try just sprinkling a bit of cheese on top or sautéing with bacon and onion instead – ain’t nobody got time for bland veggies.
7. Get creative
Another trick to encourage little ones to try new things is to make them fun, make up a face from vegetables, give them a variety of colours and eat lots of veggies in front of them. When it comes to kids it’s usually monkey see monkey do!
We have heaps of brilliant kids recipes for more healthy, hidden veggie meals in our Healthy Mummy Kids Cookbook.
If you any other tips, do share them with us.
Love the Healthy Mummy team xxx
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