Getting kids to eat their daily servings of fruits and veggies can be tricky – especially when you have a picky eater! However, kids need fruits and vegetables in their diet, as they provide many essential vitamins and nutrients that help their growth and development. A children’s nutritionist will always recommend that children get an appropriate amount of food and veggies on a daily basis.
Finding creative ways to encourage fruits and vegetables in your child’s diet can be fun for the entire family. The key is to use kid-friendly recipes and allow your child to feel involved in the process.
In this article, we will discuss six ways to get kids to eat more fruit and seven ways to get them to eat more veggies. Keep reading to learn fun ideas for snacks and meals!
6 Ways to Get Kids to Eat More Fruit
Fruits are an essential part of a child’s daily diet.
Not only do they provide vitamins and nutrients, but they also help to boost a child’s immune system, helping their body to fight off illness and diseases.
Here are six great ways to encourage kids to eat more fruit:
1. Involve Your Children in Food Shopping
Children are inherently curious – and the more involved they are in the food shopping process, the more likely they will try new things.
While at the store, let your kid pick out their favourite fruits and select any new ones they would like to try. This can be a learning experience, too – spend some time in the produce department showing them the different fun and colourful fruits, and teach them the names of each one!
2. Make Fruit Appealing
Fruit is a great ingredient for making eye-catching dishes. You can make fruit more appealing to kids by making sure to remove any peels and by cutting the fruits into fun shapes – cubes, spheres, stars, or any other shape you can imagine.
Include multiple types of fruit, either mixed together or separated on a plate, depending on how your child feels about mixing foods.
3. Blend Fruit Into Smoothies
It’s hard to go wrong with smoothies when attempting to feed your child more fruit.
Blending fruit into smoothies is a great way to get them their entire daily serving of fruit in one go. Plus, you can use either whole fruits or organic fruit powders.
Organic fruit powders are great because they have a long shelf-life and offer all the essential nutrients of fruit without having to break the bank on several different types of ingredients.
4. Use Fruit to Top Cereal or Yogurt
Fruits make excellent toppings for cereal or yoghurt – two foods that tend to be a home run with kids of all ages. Sliced bananas, strawberries, and blueberries are also great choices for fruit toppings that can be served with cereal or yoghurt as a breakfast and snack.
5. Pack Fruit in Their Lunches
If you want to ensure your child is eating their daily fruit at school, pack their favourite fruits in their lunch!
Cutting up fruits for your kid makes them easier and more fun to eat – just ensure they are stored properly, so they don’t brown or become mushy between the morning and lunchtime.
6. Make Fruit the Main Dessert
Who doesn’t love dessert?
By making fruits the main dessert option, you can show your child the many uses for the fruit and encourage healthy relationships with sugar. To make fruit a little sweeter for dessert time, add some sweet yoghurt, whipped cream, or sugar on the side for dipping.
7 Ways to Get Kids to Eat More Veggies
Eating a daily serving of vegetables provides your child with energy and essential antioxidants that keep them healthy and ensure they receive a good amount of dietary fiber.
Here are seven ways to get kids to eat more veggies:
1. Make Veggies Fun
It can be more difficult to get the average child to try new vegetables than fruits, largely because they lack the sweetness that makes the fruit more appealing to kids.
To make veggies fun, try cutting them into fun shapes and combining them with yummy, kid-friendly dips – like ranch or Greek yoghurt-based dips. Cucumbers, celery, and carrots are all great options for chopping up into fun shapes and patterns.
2. Puree & Grate Vegetables into Soup
If your child is unsure of vegetables, you can always go the secret by pureeing and grating vegetables into soup.
By doing so, you can mask the taste or texture of the veggies with various other ingredients you know your child likes – such as chopped potatoes or chicken.
3. Try Kid-Friendly Veggie Recipes
To make kid-friendly veggies recipes, try getting innovative with dishes they already love – like pizza, pasta, or nachos. You can easily include items like broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, squash, and more in these recipes, all while still satisfying your child’s cravings.
4. Make Smoothies with Carrots or Spinach
You can use more than just fruits to craft a delicious smoothie.
Spinach and carrots are two of the best vegetables to blend into a smoothie. Their subtle flavour makes it easy to hide under the bolder fruit, juice, and dairy flavours.
5. Use Tomato-Based Spaghetti Sauce
Make your child an early fan of tomatoes with tomato-based spaghetti sauce!
Spaghetti and meatballs are almost always a hit with kids, so finding ways to incorporate more vegetables into spaghetti are key. You can even try out vegetarian or vegan meatballs crafted from veggies.
6. Craft Creative Veggies Snacks
Kids love snacktime – making this the perfect opportunity to introduce them to more veggies!
Great vegetable-based snacks for kids include:
- Ants on a Log – a creative snack made from celery stalks with peanut butter and raisins on top
- Sugar snap peas & hummus for dipping
- Cheese & veggie quesadillas on a whole-wheat tortilla with finely diced bell peppers or tomatoes to melt in the cheese
- Baked tortilla chips with salsa packed with tomato, onion, and peppers
7. Be a Veggie Role Model
One of the best ways to encourage children to eat vegetables is to model good eating habits.
If you are regularly eating your daily vegetables, your child will also want to. Kids love to mirror our behaviours – that is how they learn the best.
Final Thoughts
Getting kids to eat their daily servings of fruits and veggies does not have to be a monumental task.
With the right tricks and approach, you can make fruits and veggies fun for your child while encouraging healthy eating habits that will set them up for success.
