Vegetables are an essential part of everyone’s diet, and to ensure your child gets the energy and nutrients they need, the government recommends that under eights eat between two and four-and-a-half serves of veggies each day.
Of course, sometimes this is easier said than done.
Young diners can be notoriously choosy, and although some kids are happy to munch raw broccoli from the get-go, others are stuck on one vegetable, or resistant to many!
Luckily, there are ways to make different vegetables more appetising for your child. Here are Nutrition Australia’s top tips for parents.
Enjoy veggies yourself
Your child is constantly watching and learning from you, so it’s important to make healthy food choices and embrace vegetables in your own diet.
This means cooking vegetable-laden meals for the family, eating them with enthusiasm (for your child to see), and being positive about things like seasonal vegetables and new recipes.
You can also make conscious moves to ‘swap in’ more veg (e.g. by making vegetable muffins, instead of chocolate ones, and serving veggie sticks with dips, instead of crackers).
Friends and extended family can also set a great example (e.g. seeing another child motoring through capsicum at daycare, or hearing Granny espousing the virtues of peas, can put a positive sheen on vegetables).
Offer vegetables again… and again
Nutrition Australia says some children need to be offered a certain vegetable 10 times before they’ll decide to taste it, and 10 more times before they’ll enjoy it, so if at first you don’t succeed, try, and try again!
It can help to offer the vegetable at different mealtimes (e.g. if steamed broccoli is a no-go at dinnertime, a baked broccoli cheddar quinoa bite might tease the tastebuds at lunch).
And when your child does turn their nose up at a vegetable, play it cool, instead of exerting pressure.
Raising Children suggests that you give your child about 20 minutes to eat their veggies (or until everyone else has finished eating), then simply remove their plate and try again another time.
Praise your child when they try vegetables
Littlies respond very well to positive reinforcement (as we all do!), and praise provides great encouragement when your child tries a vegetable.
Instead of offering a reward for eating the veggie (e.g. “If you eat your beans, you can have dessert”), focus on providing specific praise for what they’ve tried (e.g. “Emily, I love the way you tasted your beans.”)
Raising Children says food bribes can make healthy eating seem like a chore and move your child’s focus to treats, so dish up some well-worded praise, not sweet promises.
Cook vegetables with your child
Cooking with children has lots of benefits, and when it comes to veggies, Nutrition Australia says that, ‘Kids who help prepare their veggies are more likely to eat them.’
Your young child can help with the cooking process by doing things like:
- Choosing the vegetables you’ll cook with
- Washing salad leaves
- Cutting mushrooms with a non-sharp knife
- Sprinkling veggie toppings onto a pizza, and
- Growing and harvesting home-grown tomatoes, beans or other produce
As their fine motor skills develop, ages five to seven can help with grating and chopping veggies, and your tween can work up to peeling potatoes, opening cans of tomatoes, and following simple recipes.
Offer vegetables as snacks
Kids are often ‘grazers,’ and keeping vegetable snacks on stand-by encourages your sprog to reach for healthy food when hunger strikes.
Snacks like carrot sticks, cucumber rounds, cherry tomatoes and frozen peas put vegetables on your child’s radar, dips make veggie sticks all the tastier, and bento boxes have lots of spaces for bite-sized food.
Just make sure all the veggies are prepared in safe ways for your young child. Cherry tomatoes should be cut up so they’re not a choking risk, and hard veggies (like carrot) should be cooked, mashed, peeled or grated for your little one.
Combine fun, flavour and variety
Although your child might want to stick to the one vegetable they enjoy, variety is the spice of life, and the more veggies you offer, the more likely your child will find vegetables (in the plural) that they like.
You can encourage your child to eat a ‘rainbow’ by putting lots of different veggies on a pizza, in a stir-fry, or in that bento box, and rainbow rice paper rolls are a beautiful kid-friendly recipe.
Also, think about how you can prepare and flavour the veggies in appealing ways, and mix up new tastes with old favourites, so the entire meal isn’t focused on the unfamiliar ingredient.
If you’ve got the time and inspiration, events like Halloween and Christmas are a great opportunity to have fun with food (e.g. with a Halloween veggie skeleton, Halloween roasted vegetables or cucumber Christmas trees), and planting a ‘broccoli tree’ in a ‘hill’ of mashed potato can transform it into something magical for the mouth.
Hide vegetables if necessary
Nutrition Australia says it’s important to make the vegetable the ‘hero,’ so your child becomes familiar with its shape and texture, and learns to like what they see.
However, if your child’s a super fussy eater, there is the option of hiding the veggie in a food they like (e.g. by grating or pureeing it into a soup or sauce) to give them nutrients in the short-term, while continuing to offer the original version of the vegetable to them.
Recipes like cauliflower mac ’n’ cheese and carrot cake bliss balls don’t shy away from their healthy ingredients, but they do make veggies very attractive for picky palates!
At the end of the day, positivity, persistence, patience and a bit of pizzaz will help your child learn to love different vegetables and their body will thank you, even if they don’t. All those vitamins, minerals, disease-fighting antioxidants and fibrous bits are important for their health and wellbeing, so keep trying!
What about us grown-ups?
Vegetables are equally important for adults, and although we’re supposed to be munching through five serves of veggies day, only four per cent of Australians are meeting this quota.
The average Aussie eats half as many vegetable serves as we should, but every October, Nutrition Australia’s Try for 5 campaign encourages us to boost our intake.
Fresh, frozen, canned, dried and juiced veggies all count towards the five serves, and https://www.tryfor5.org.au/ contains recipes and tips to inspire greater vegetable consumption. Dig in!
