Most kids prefer eating cookies over carrots. However, you should be sure that your child is eating enough vegetables each day.
According to one CDC study, 93% of kids don’t eat enough vegetables. It’s important that your kids get adequate nutrition, but if your kids hate vegetables, every meal might feel like a struggle.
Fortunately, there are some tricks that can make things easier. Here’s how to get your child to eat vegetables.
Let Your Child Decide
To get your child to eat more vegetables, you should make sure that you’re giving them a good amount of control over their choices. Giving them a decision to make regarding which vegetables they eat during a meal or how they want them served can both be helpful.
Letting them into the decision-making process can help them to feel more interested in their meal and can encourage them to eat more. Simply giving them a choice over a raw or cooked vegetable can be useful.
By letting them make a decision, your child can feel like they have more control over what they eat. As a result, they may not dread eating a vegetable during their meal as much.
Find a Vegetable They Like
Continuing from the last point, make sure that you’re giving children options that they actually like. You may need to experiment a bit to discover which vegetables they enjoy the most.
Remember that every child is different. Some kids may prefer to have a salad while others may prefer to have something such as a sweet potato or corn.
In addition to trying different vegetables, you should also try different preparation methods, add different spices, and try both cooked and raw options. Once you discover what kind of vegetable they like, be sure to remember it. Make it available to them often and let it be one of the options they can choose from for their meals.
Make It Fun
The more fun that you can make the vegetables you serve your kids seem, the more likely they’ll be to eat them.
You may want to think of ways that you can present the veggies you serve in a better light, such as by cutting vegetables into the shape of an animal, for example. You may even want to arrange the whole plate of vegetables into the shape of a face. It can also be a good idea to buy a fun kids dinner set for your child.
Changing the presentation and even thinking of a fun and unique name for the vegetable arrangement can make it more likely that your child will eat them and enjoy them.
Stay Positive
To get your kids to eat more veggies, you should make sure to keep a positive attitude surrounding them.
First of all, make sure that you serve as a good role model and eat veggies regularly. Also, avoid talking about how they taste in a negative light and make sure that your kids can see you enjoying them.
Similarly, you’ll want to avoid calling your child a “picky eater” or saying that they “don’t like vegetables” when talking about your kids. This may only encourage them to hold onto their behavior and make it part of who they are.
Pair Veggies With a Dip
If you want to get your kids to eat more vegetables, make sure that you pair the vegetables you give them with something else. There are all kinds of veggie dips, hummus dips, and salad dressing options out there that can make eating vegetables much easier to handle.
Consider giving your kids some ranch or another condiment to go with salads or with vegetables such as celery and carrots. This can improve the flavor quite a bit and may make your kids more excited to eat vegetables than ever before.
Mix It Up
Hiding vegetables within another type of food is one of the best options to consider for encouraging them to eat more.
Making a smoothie that contains both fruits and veggies can be a great way to serve vegetables to your kids. If there is a sufficient amount of fruit in a smoothie, the vegetables will be very hard to notice.
Another option is to serve soup or another type of dish in which the vegetables won’t be the prime focus. In certain dishes, the taste of the vegetables will be covered up by other flavors.
Adding the vegetables to another tasty dish can make them harder to notice and may make them easier for your kids to stomach.
Start Meals With Vegetables
If you want to have healthy children, one of the simplest tricks you can use is telling them to eat their vegetables first before they’re allowed to start on the rest of their meal. If they’re excited about the main dish or the desert, chances are that they’ll be willing to get the vegetables out of the way.
Keep in mind that this trick works best if your kids are particularly hungry or if they like the meal will be served to them after the vegetables are completed.
Learning How to Get Your Child to Eat Vegetables
If you’re trying to learn how to get your child to eat vegetables, be sure that you start by using the tips above. By giving your child more choice, hiding vegetables in smoothies, and becoming a great role model, you may find that your child starts to love having vegetables.
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