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Kids/Parenting

Getting kids to eat vegetables

The other night I turned to my husband, Ryan, and said, “Do you think Hayden is a picky eater?”

“YES!” he said without hesitation.

I don’t think so, though. He eats a wide variety of foods: the standard toddler fare of peanut butter, bananas, graham crackers, fruit other than bananas, yogurt, bread, milk, juice, desserts, pizza, cheese, TUNA!!! (which has become a family joke), green beans, black beans, corn, etc. He doesn’t care what color his food is, he doesn’t care if it’s touching one another and while he does love his “yunt” (lunch, meaning sandwich, usually peanut butter), he’s not fixated on one single food.

Today, I’ll just focus on the vegetables—what can we do to get our kids to eat more vegetables (or is this one of “those” battles?)

  • Offer the food repeatedly (without high expectations). Some people say it takes as many as 16 (no, not 16,000) interactions with a food for children to try it. Hopefully these do not all come at one sitting; that seems a little excessive, yes?
  • Let them see you eat it. You’re the best example for your children. Hayden won’t eat pepperoni, even though his father does, because he’s seen me pick it off my pizza too many times. This isn’t always mandatory of course—for the most part, Hayden has not yet picked up on what foods I don’t eat. I was 22 when I realized my mother didn’t eat peas. I love peas!
  • Have veggies ready and available for snacks (and often nothing else). Also helpful here: let them use ranch dressing, or another dressing they like. Ketchup, if you must (hey, isn’t that a vegetable? 😉 ).
  • Fill half a child’s plate with veggies. Another quarter should be meat and the last quarter, starch. Quick and easy guide to balancing your meals.
  • Serve veggies “family-style,” leave the rest in the kitchen. When sitting down to dinner, only bring the platters/bowls of vegetables to the table. Leave starches and meats in the kitchen—if you really want more of those, you’ll have to go get them, but if you or your children are just hungry after finishing your first plate, the vegetables are the only convenient choice.
  • Play games. My mother would play that our thin-cut green beans were worms and we were baby birds. I love green beans (though the thin-cut ones are just a bit slimy for my taste 😉 ). Another favorite: your child (this one’s usually better for boys) is a dinosaur and he’s going to eat the trees (broccoli).
  • Hide them if you have to. Zucchini banana bread, anyone? (Nope, me neither.)
  • A caveat: Don’t bargain, especially not for ‘better’ foods. Apparently, psychologists say that bargaining with your children (“Eat two more bites of peas or no dessert!”) just reinforces the notion that the food they’re averse to is disgusting, worse than the desired food and something to be endured.

And I can’t talk about eating habits without mentioning an awesome book on the subject, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink. Some of these tips come right from his book.

I found this book really entertaining—and pretty shocking. He looks at our hidden motivations for eating, factors that influence us in eating—and strategies for being more aware of what we eat (or just tricking ourselves into eating less!).

But obviously, I’m no expert in getting your children to eat their veggies. What’s worked for you?

Part of Works-for-me Wednesday.

6 replies on “Getting kids to eat vegetables”

Thankfully, my older nephew has an incredible appetite. He was eating salads at two years old and is willing to try anything and actually LOOKS FORWARD to trying new vegetables and fruits. So we didn’t have to pull any fast ones over on him.

However, my mother had to think of something with me because I was (and still am) a horribly picky eater. So she started putting vegetables in my Happy Meal boxes. Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it either. It was a sad sad day when I asked for green beans at the counter of McDonald’s. The cashier thought it was adorable and couldn’t pick up on my mother’s signs to “go along with it” and I’ve never touched a green bean since. Or any other cooked vegetables for that matter.

I do think patience is key and just casually introducing new foods without pressuring them to try it works. Over the years I’ve managed to add whipped cream and cucumbers and broccoli and hummus and tomato sauce to the small list of foods that I will eat. I really think the problem comes in when parents try to exert too much control over what kids eat.

Give Hayden a BIG hug for me!

Dr. Whitney Anderson knows of this problem all too well. Eight out of ten kids don’t get enough veggies and that is why she and her husband started Full Tank Foods-www.fulltankfoods.com. Full Tank makes frozen veggie enriched favorites like Macaroni & Cheese, Pasta & Red Sauce, Pizza Fondue and Cheesy Mashed Potatoes in a pocket sandwich. Full Tank encourages parents to try the real veggies first, but if a child refuses, these products can solve that problem and provide the nutrition the child needs.

Parents of kids with sensory issues also fight this battle. It can be very difficult to provide the nutrition they need due to an increased sensitivity to taste, smell, texture and even color! Veggies pretty much cover all these senses. Full Tank veggie enriched kid favorites offers a solution for these kiddos as well.

I came upon your blog today on the lpm blog and I so needed to read this. I have 5 boys and have always been terrible at this and I so want to feed them better. Thank you!

My son is the same way. Doesn’t matter what’s being served for dinner, he doesn’t like it. I’m guilty of the bribery: “just try it and if you don’t like it you don’t have to eat it, but then you can’t have dessert.” Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t. My parents did it with me and I like most vegetables now…go figure. I’m just afraid he’ll be malnourished, but I can’t shove veggies down his throat. Ah, the worries we face.

Malnourishment horror story (saw this on True Stories from the ER or something like that):

A little boy, about 2, was brought into the ER because it hurt him to walk. At first they suspected child abuse, but when the drew blood, the parents were more upset than the child was. But the blood work didn’t reveal much either.

Finally, after several hours, one of the nurses thought to ask what his diet was like. The mom informed them that he ate oatmeal, because that was what he liked.

The followup question was, “What else?”

The mom answered, “Well, nothing. He only likes oatmeal.”

The nurse (it may have been a social services worker) informed the mother that they had to feed him more than just oatmeal.

The child had SCURVY! But he was okay.

We continue to serve new foods and the kids have to try the ‘no thank-you bite’. Sometimes the bite leads to the child finishing the meal! They have to at least try it.

For me personally, I’ve given up fighting about food. I serve things they like, I expose them to things that they may or may not enjoy (with the no thank-you bite in place) and we all eat rather well.

I make mean banana muffins, a great zucchini loaf and the kids love my beat chocolate cake (to die for) so I’m all for sneaking them in when i can but I don’t go out of my way to do so (like putting the carrot puree in the spag. sauce….but hey, what ever works for ya….)

When the kids are hungry before supper, I fill one of those big divided trays with raw veggies and dip….and cheese cubes and pickles….they go crazy with all the variety and sometimes, that’s what they end up eating for supper. They don’t even realize that I’m serving them veggies in this case because it’s not ‘supper’….just a snack. Somehow that makes a difference. Go figure.

Who would have thunk it?

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