You can discover how to get your kids excited about vegetables through participation, games, and family attitudes. Now, here are four straightforward changes to make vegetables a part of your child's daily life.
These techniques take very little time and effort to implement. If you stick with them, your children will eat their vegetables without a fuss in a matter of months.
The One-Bite Rule
Serve your family at least one colorful vegetable every night, and make it a rule that everyone must take one bite of everything on the plate. Forcing the issue beyond the one-bite rule can bring on a power struggle that will not help your children to develop a positive attitude about vegetables. Vegetables shouldn't be a punishment.
A child may need to try a food up to 15 times before he accepts it, and the one-bite rule provides the opportunity for your child to get used to a wide variety of foods. Over the course of a year, you can introduce dozens of new, healthy foods that will eventually become standard fare for your family.
Start Meals With Veggie Soup or Unconventional Salad
If you have the time, start meals with a salad or vegetable-based soup. When your family is hungry, they'll be more likely to dig in with enthusiasm to these vegetables. Serve the rest of dinner about 10 minutes after the soup or salad.
Salads don't have to be a big pile of greens, either. Rather than basing the salads on lettuce, try using tomatoes, sliced fennel, peas, green beans, beets, edamame, or grated carrots as the foundation.
If your kids will only eat a salad when it's drowned in ranch dressing, allow that at first. Each week, start cutting the ranch with a little bit of fat free yogurt, increasing the amount of yogurt each week until you reach a 1-to-1 ratio. Then, work on reducing the amount of dressing they use.
Lay Out Healthful Pre-Dinner Snacks
The hours after school and before dinner are prime time for grazing. Make it easy for your family to take the edge off hunger with a plate of veggies and hummus or a low-fat yogurt dip. Keep the plate on the kitchen countertop or in the family room at the time when your family starts pre-dinner snacking.
Cook Vegetables in New, Appealing Ways
If you kids don't like certain vital vegetables (such as nutritional powerhouses beans, broccoli, or dark leafy greens), make sure that you present them in an appealing way.
Broccoli is a prime example of a vegetable whose bad reputation is usually due to poor preparation. Overcooked broccoli has an off-putting color and smell. Raw or barely-cooked broccoli can be incredibly difficult for younger children to get through. Frozen broccoli has little flavor and a mealy texture.
Instead, try steaming fresh broccoli until it is vibrantly green, then serve it with a bit of olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt. Or, roast bite-sized broccoli florets in 450-degree oven for 7 minutes and top with toasted breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese.
There are dozens of ways to prepare almost any vegetable. Find recipes online or in health-oriented cookbooks and magazines, and keep working at it until you find the preparations that suit your family's palate.
Remember that you cannot expect changes to happen overnight; but if you stick with these ideas, your kids will transform into effortless veggie eaters in just a few months.
Christine E. Taylor - Christine E. Taylor is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Christine is currently writing a series of articles ...
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