Ideas For Getting Children To Eat Vegetables
The ideas to make children eat vegetables are never too much, and for many parents it is a challenge to get our children to consume them. Thinking then of the daily struggle of many households, we will give you these easy tips so that, at last, our children leave their plates clean and their reluctance to eat vegetables.
The first thing you should know is that if you force them to eat vegetables you will only get the children to reject them more and link the action with a type of punishment. You must understand that it must be a gradual process, until little by little they become familiar with the appearance of these foods as well as their respective textures and flavors.
The trick to achieve success, without much effort, is knowing how to hide vegetables, so that our children consume them without knowing it, or in any case in a way in which they feel empathy when doing it. In other words, subtlety is the way to go.
Ideas to get children to eat vegetables
As we anticipated at the beginning, the objective of disguising the presence of vegetables lies in the gradual introduction of vegetables. This way we can get them to assimilate the flavor better, until they can get to the point of eating a vegetable garnish directly. Take note of the following proposals.
Vegetable creams and croutons
In all the children’s recipe guides you will find vegetable creams as the first option. And it is that without a doubt with this type of preparations the vegetables go unnoticed. The most recommended creams are those with a sweeter flavor such as zucchini, corn, squash, chard, and sweet potato.
Accompanied by heavy cream, cream cheese and bread croutons, they will be delicious. Do not forget that when the dishes are fun our children eat them with more emotion, so before serving you can decorate the soup with a smile made of bread croutons.
Keep in mind that these foods have been shown to be capable of helping health, thanks to their content of phytonutrients with antioxidant character.
Make fun presentations with vegetables
Children love plates with presentations in which bright colors such as red, yellow or green predominate, as well as any shape that is fun for them such as faces, animal shapes, little airplanes or whatever you can think of.
This will allow mealtime to be a playful space where you can also tell stories that induce them to eat more animatedly. Just as our parents encouraged us with the stories of how Popeye transformed into a strong man after eating spinach, you can also associate the figure of the vegetables that you prepared for your child with his favorite superhero.
Healthy fast food or with extra vegetables
A good opportunity to get children to eat vegetables is to prepare fast food recipes such as pizza or hamburgers at home, but in which many vegetables are included. The child will not be able to resist the temptation to eat his favorite dish, and if you hide the ingredients well he will not notice that it is full of vegetables.
Recommendations include replacing sausages with vegetables in pizzas, preparing hamburgers where you place between the layers of bread mushrooms, tomatoes, finely chopped lettuce so that their presence is imperceptible. Try to introduce a good amount of fresh tomato in these preparations. This food contains lycopene, a good ally of the cardiovascular system. This is stated by a study published in Food Chemistry.
Educate by example
It is important that the children see us consuming a lot of vegetables and also fruits. Children always tend to copy the attitudes and ways of behaving of their parents. If they notice that they frequently consume vegetables, they will feel a great interest and curiosity to try what their parents eat with such pleasure, so try to provoke them and describe in great detail each of the flavors that you are experiencing when tasting them.
However, if, on the contrary, they notice that their parents are sitting at the table and there are no vegetables on their plates, they will not understand why they should eat them, there will also begin the reluctance to eat.
Include vegetables in the children’s diet
Lastly, try to make your vegetables look palatable from a child’s point of view, not yours. On the other hand, keep in mind that boiled vegetables will not have the same flavor to sautéed or au gratin vegetables. If your child likes cheese gratin the vegetables, you can also bread them or add the ingredients and flavors that he likes the most.
