10 Tips to Encourage Kids to Eat More Vegetables

When it comes to getting your kids to eat more vegetables its never easy.

However, these helpful tips will have your little one’s munch on veggies in no time.

1.Choose Baby Veggies: Choose baby veggies such as baby carrots and cucumbers as they are sweeter and more tender.

2.Crunchy Textures: By choosing crunchy textured veggies for your kids, start off with raw carrots, there is a lot of other options to choose from including Sugar Snaps or Peas in a Pod, along with Peppers, Cucumber and Turnip.

3.Vary the Presentations: By creating different looks with the veggies such as using a spiraliser, peeler or crinkle cut knife. This can make them look more interesting for kids to try out.

4.Offer raw veggies at the start of a meal when kids are hungry: Raw veggies are often preferred to cooked veggies by kids for snacks or lunchboxes.

5.Give more Control: Serve food in a ‘buffet Style’ where there are plates and bowls of different food in the middle of the table and everyone gets to serve themselves. For example, a small portion of fruit, pasta, etc.

6.Make Vegetables Fun: Simple games can be played, especially with younger children, for example, pretend the broccoli is dinosaur food or label foods with superhero names like ‘X-Ray-Vision Carrots’.

7.Give Choice: Give kids a choice and let them pick from one option from two or three options. It’s best if these options are similar, rather than very different like broccoli and chocolate.

8.Help grow their own: Growing a garden of vegetables or even one cucumber in a pot is a good way to help kids fall in love with vegetables. The process of choosing their own seeds, planting and watering them along with watching them sprout, grow and produce food is a fun way for them to learn about vegetables.

9.Explore Foods: Getting kids used to the feel, taste, smell and texture of foods is very important, especially trickier to eat, wet, hot or soft foods. Use everyday opportunities to get kids familiar with vegetables, even if its messy it is still very valuable that kids learn about properties of foods. A quick example of this is having pea races using a frozen pea and a cooked pea.

10.Getting Kids Involved: One way to get your kids familiar with the properties of food is to get them involved whether that’s by choosing what to buy, choosing what to cook or even helping to prepare it, serve it and of course taste it.