4 Tricks to Get Your Children Eating Healthier
Some kids will eat almost anything you put on their plate and others, not so much. These picky eaters are hard to please and usually want to eat the same thing over and over. It’s especially common in younger children. Unfortunately, that’s not very healthy. Therefore, parents with picky eaters have to find ways to get their kids to at least try different foods. To get children eating healthier can definitely be difficult at times.
Introducing them to a variety of fruits and vegetables isn’t always enough. That’s when you need to use your imagination and find ways to get them to eat healthy without them knowing it.
Here are four tricks to get your children eating healthier:
- Make food fun. Make the food colorful, turn pancakes or pizzas into smiley faces or cut the food into various shapes to make them more fun to eat.
- Replace cookies, candy and chips with bananas, watermelon, apples and other healthy foods you can eat for a snack. Your kids will eat what’s available.
- Make tasty milk shakes out of real fruit. Children love them and you’ll love the fact they are actually eating/drinking something healthy.
- Sneak veggies into foods your children already eat. For example, chop up tomatoes, peppers, onions, mushrooms, and other vegetables and use them as the topping for your homemade pizzas or add them to some of your child’s other favorite dishes.
You can’t force your children to eat healthy but you can encourage them to do so. When you make mealtime fun and interesting, kids are more likely to try new things. Use these tips to make mealtime a positive experience for your children and you’ll get better results. Best of luck!
Do you have any tips or tricks to get children eating healthier that you would like to share with our readers? Please leave them in the comment below.
Great tips! I find that it is easier to get kids to eat more fruit in the warmer months – the colder months are more tricky.
Wonderful and simple ideas, smoothies and home made Popsicles are great way to sneak in veggies and fruits.
Thanks for the information, great article.
I like to make smiley face pancakes.. the kids love it. We also make Ants on a log : celery stick with peanut butter and raisins on top
Good tips for most people, unless you have a grandson like I do who one day loves something and the next hates it – it’s very frustrating for my daughter-on-law.
Some good tips here. We’ve been lucky so far as my daughter isn’t a picky eater and eats most fruit and vegetables…let’s hope it continues!
My first ate virtually everything. What seems to be helping the most with my second is making sure there is lots of flavour in her food. (She was never fond of purees to begin with, but would only eat them if I added ginger or garlic to vegetables or lentils, cardamom to mango, etc.) Even now that she self-feeds a variety of foods, many of her favourite foods are ones with lots of flavour. I think sometimes people are afraid to add spices with a pickier eater; some may prefer plainer food, but others will surprise you and prefer spices.
I really agree that if healthy food is readily available, they’re much more likely to go for it. Fruit can be a lot of fun and dips are great for having with veggies.
I love making shakes/ smoothies – you can add spinach and it doesn’t even taste like spinach!!!
Good tips. I have found that including the kids in my cooking/baking and educating them about each ingredient (i.e. what it is, where it comes from, its history, and use) helps in making them curious and more accepting of it. It also taught them about healthy eating and now they have life skills to carry into their adulthood; proud that they will not settle for garbage or junk.
I far prefer the idea of making it fun rather than being sneaky, but sometimes, sneaky is required!
I can remember my mum trying to force me to eat various things I didn’t like. I’d only eat onions if they were diced really small and practically disappeared in the food. I can laugh about it now since I do eat a much more varied diet these days but my poor mum…
Great ideas! My kids eat pretty healthy but can prove picky at times and love the idea of sneaking veggies in