Tip # 6 My child won’t eat vegetables!
Remember the tip about ‘healthy rules’ at home? Well, make sure you stick to them and eventually it will all become a habit for all at home.
Vegetables are crucial for giving your children the vitamins and minerals they need to improve their immune systems and to grow and learn. The nutrition they provide cannot be found anywhere else, so if you leave vegetables out of your child’s diet, it’s likely that they will be deficient in essential nutrients.
How do I get them to eat vegetables?
- get your child to take part in preparing food – this could be just washing the vegetables or cutting them (if they’re older) or choosing them at the shop. You could even have little pots on the patio or balcony, for them to grow their own!
- Find out about what each vegetable does to your body (ie: carrots are good for the eyes, broccoli is good for the heart, spinach and cabbage are good for immunity and blood etc) and give your child that information when cooking vegetables. Kids love to learn about their bodies!
- Make sure they eat all their vegetables before anything else on their plates – and especially before you give them any pudding!
- Colourful food is much more appealing to kids than boring white/brown food, so add colour to each meal by varying the vegetables – don’t just offer potatoes!
- Replace plain tomato pasta sauce with a vegetable sauce instead – like a thick soup to which you can add pasta or rice and then a bit of cheese!
- Make your Bolognese or plain tomato pasta sauce with other vegetables added to it – and then blend the lot – carrots, courgettes, mushrooms, spinach are great in pasta sauce. Then make sure they eat a lot of sauce, not just the pasta!
- Kids are normally hungry after school so will be more willing to try new things then. This is the best time to give them a healthy snack! (see next tip on healthy snacks)
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