Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables: Four Tried and True Tips
If eating vegetables is one of your toddler’s least-favorite activities (right up there with sharing toys and taking no for an answer), consider this: One of the simplest ways to get your child interested in eating vegetables is to eat yours. Not convinced it could be that easy? If you’ve ever caught your toddler “talking” on your phone or shuffling around in Daddy’s shoes, you know that toddlers like to do what you do. So if you’re eating veggies with gusto, there’s a good chance your little copycat will eventually take notice — and maybe even a bite. Don’t get frustrated, though, if she doesn’t dig in immediately. Count on at least ten exposures before she ventures a nibble of a new food. Then allow up to 15 tries before she acquires a taste for it.
Until then, if you’re worried your toddler is missing out on nutrients, it’s totally legit to use some smoke and mirrors to get vegetables onto your child’s plate while she’s developing her palate. To that end, here are four sneaky ways to get your toddler eating vegetables (even if she doesn’t know it yet!).
Tip 1 : Sneak veggies in purees
Pureed vegetables can slide easily under a toddler’s taste radar if you add them into mainstay meals. For instance: Mix cauliflower or yellow squash puree into mac-n-cheese or mashed potatoes; add vegetable juice to soups; blend any veggies into spaghetti and pizza sauces or tuck them between lasagna layers; shred zucchini, beets, or carrots and mix them into meat loaf, meatballs, and burgers; or scramble pureed broccoli into eggs — your toddler might love some “green eggs” with her ham.
Tip 2 : Switch it up
Substitute soy sausages for regular — it really counts as a vegetable! Instead of noodles, serve up spaghetti squash and then smother with sauce. Even easier: Trade taco meat for packaged veggie crumbles. Your whole family may not be able to tell the difference.
Tip 3 : Bury veggies in baked goods
It may seem like a mismatch, but you can slip a bushel of veggies into sweets without anyone noticing: Substitute white-bean puree for some of the butter in cookie recipes; bake a package of frozen spinach into brownie mix (honestly, it takes good!); add shredded zucchini or carrots to sweet muffins and breads; hide beets in chocolate cake or pureed carrots and squash in yellow cakes; or mix pumpkin into pancake batter. Who said baked goods can’t be good for you?
Tip 4 : Make a veggie-juice cocktail
Add carrot juice to apple juice and serve it as is, or blend the mixture with ice to make a shake (add yogurt to turn it into a veggie-fruit smoothie). Even more fun: Pour the juices into ice-pop trays and freeze your own Popsicles. Your toddler never has to know how healthy her icy treat truly is.
*excerpt from www.whattoexpect.com
