How to Get Your Child to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables?

Children get amused with many things around them, but one habit that takes the cake is fussy eating.

They just seem to enjoy giving a tough time to their mothers at the dining table. While cakes and candies find it easy to enter their plates, they totally reject anything that is even remotely healthy.

Concerned parents try everything in their power to make their children eat what they should, but the young ones seem to love their mealtime tantrums. Many among us continue to serve rejected food as usual with an underlined wisdom that our children should eat healthy. However, does that really work in a larger scenario? In my experience I can positively say, “It just does not help!” Children might eat out of fear of offending their parents but they do not enjoy or feel connected with their food. We need to help them develop a healthy relation with the diet to ensure that they feel comfortable in trying new recipes and foods in the future.

Here are simple ways to get children to eat their fruits everyday:

• Serve frozen fruits with yogurt or cold custard. Make your child’s favourite fruit a part of the yummy treats.
• Use avocado pulp as spread for sandwiches. Make sure that the sandwich stuffing is colourful and offers surprising flavours.
• Keep a bowl of dried fruits on their study table and encourage them to snack on them.
• Fruit smoothies are great when it comes to hiding a few fruits and their flavor; of course the goodness still shines. Use healthy ingredients like milk, honey and nuts to enhance the flavor.
• Bake the muffins at home and don’t forget to add chopped fruits or dried fruits to the batter before baking.

Sneaking in vegetables is also easy, try these:

• Prepare homemade vegetable dips and let your child enjoy them with their favourite cracker bagel or toast stick.
• Puree the vegetables and mix it with the batter of pancakes to add variety to the recipe.
• Use seasonal vegetables to stuff the sandwich, add the ingredients of your child’s taste in smaller but visible portions to encourage them to eat it.
• Replace the deep fried vegetables sticks with sticks that are made with oven baked healthy vegetables like carrot and sweet potato with the seasoning that they enjoy.
• Add finely grated or chopped vegetables to pizza toppings or pasta.

While sneaking fruits and vegetables in food is good to make your child eat these healthy items, bringing a change their perception towards the food is important for long term benefits. Setting an example yourself is the first step. Do not refuse any food in your child’s presence, this will send a signal that they also can do the same.

Other tips that would help:

• Make food fun: Help the child relate food with their favourite character or story. This would encourage them to eat the food with joy.
• Involve the child: Take the child to the vegetable store and let them pick the vegetables and fruits themselves. You can also involve them in food preparation or simple cooking procedures like mixing ingredients. By doing so, the child develops excitement to have that food later.
• Be persistent but not pushy: Your child may refuse to eat a particular food today, don’t worry, try after an interval or try the same food in a different form. Forcing food on them will not work. In time, the not so preferred foods may become their favorite food!
• Understand their mind: Children are least concerned about health. They actually do not understand this complicated concept, so selling them a certain food because it is healthy is not going to work. They want to grow faster to be like their mother or father, so try telling them that spinach will help them run faster, broccoli can help them be stronger, and peas will help them become taller and so on.

Make a child eat fruits and vegetables. It is important to generate their interest and help them focus. It is therefore suggested to maintain a calm and friendly environment while eating, table setting and plate decoration are important to keep the child involved. Switch off the television and make sure that you sit with the child to eat. However, let them have food on their own.