A healthy, balanced diet is crucial for everyone, but children especially. Their growing bodies need all the nutrients and vitamins they can get, so getting them on board early on is ideal for their physical development. It can be an uphill battle getting kids enthusiastic about fruits and veggies, but there are plenty of ways to make things easier for you and your little ones.
Your kids are going to be more interested in eating vegetables if they see you eating them too, so be a role model and try to sit down and eat as a family.
Talking with your children about how important fruit and veg is and the role it has in your diet does a great job in laying a foundation for healthy eating habits.
It’s one thing for them to see you eating vegetables, but it goes even further when they see you actually enjoy them. Smiling while you eat vegetables makes your children more likely to want to eat them, so you can really set a good example.
Keep it consistent
Serving fruits or vegetables with every meal is great for normalising them and introducing them as part of a daily routine.
As well as with every lunch and dinner, offer fruits and vegetables as snacks too.
Routine is crucial for their appetite regulation and helps to make sure that they come to the table hungry and wanting to eat. Stick to three meals with a snack in between, all at set times with gaps of 2.5 to 3.5 hours between them.
Make vegetables look nice
Food needs to be visually attractive to be intriguing to children, so making sure that they look appetising.
Making vegetables appeal to little ones is made easier by the huge variety of colours they come in.
Cut your veggies into small, kid-sized chunks to make them easily accessible. If you want to make them fun, get creative with cutting them into shapes or plating them up in different ways.
Let them participate
Letting your children have a say in what vegetables they have gives them a sense of control and involvement.
Not only will it give you an idea of what kind of flavours they enjoy the most, but letting them pick out new veggies at the supermarket also gets them interested in trying new ones.
