Tips For Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables
Photo credit: MaranzaMax
I received an interesting email this morning: Jennifer wants to know, “how can you get your kids to like veggies? Sure, you can hide their veggies in pasta sauce and meatballs – but I don’t want to do that. I want to teach them to LIKE the taste and texture. Any ideas?”
Wow. That’s a tough one. I have to admit that I’ve never been very successful at getting my kids to like, or eat, their vegetables. Each of my kids has no more than 2 or 3 veggies that they are willing to eat. The best advice I could give you is to keep trying: continue serving your kids a variety of vegetables, encourage them to try a bite or two, and perhaps at some point the miracle will happen and they will find out that they do like a certain vegetable.
One thing that partially worked for us is to give vegetables fun nicknames, such as “green shoelaces” for asparagus or “trees” for broccoli. Kids like to pretend, and my own kids thought it was hilarious that they were eating trees and shoelaces. It might also help to allow them to play with their food: my youngest likes to arrange her peas so that they look like a pearl necklace, then she uses her fingers to eat them one at a time. It’s excruciatingly slow, but she does eat her peas.
More ideas and interesting recipes:
Great Big Vegetable Challenge
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Jen responds:
Posted: March 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am →
Thanks! I like the funny names idea. Might work with my little one.
Jill responds:
Posted: March 4th, 2008 at 12:02 pm →
Come on… just hide the veggies. They’ll learn to like them, or at least force them in, when they’re older.
ironman responds:
Posted: March 5th, 2008 at 12:19 pm →
My mom fried everything in butter, including veggies. It actually worked. I still like my veggies buttery and salty.