In general, children like to eat healthy. They love foods like fruit, yogurt, milk, and cereals. But unfortunately, the sheer number of chocolates and chips they see and are offered everywhere often makes them crave these foods and rather reject the healthy foods you serve them.
But with a few simple tricks, you can easily get your kids to eat healthy foods, sometimes without them even realizing it:
- Hide vegetables in foods your child loves
- Serve healthy meals with foods your child loves to make them more appealing
- Serve food the way your child likes it
- Make desserts, sweets, and chips an added treat to eating healthy foods
- Have your children help prepare the food.
Trick #1: Hide vegetables in foods your child loves
- Finely chop the vegetables and wrap them in a meatloaf or meatballs. Her son won’t even notice they’re there. Especially mushrooms and aubergines are hardly visible, as they take on a similar color to meat. You can also use this hack for your ground beef when making a burger. What kid would turn down a hamburger?
- If your child likes milk and yogurt, but refuses to eat fruit, secretly puree the fruit and mix it into the yogurt. Tell your child that it is fruit yogurt that he bought like this. Or make a smoothie or milkshake. Maybe add some honey to make it sweeter and more flavorful.
Trick #2: Serve healthy meals with foods your child loves to make them more appealing
- Serve fruit or fruit puree with ice cream.
- Pack fruits in your chocolate or vanilla cream.
- Serve a small portion of the vegetables your child doesn’t like with other vegetables and French fries.
- Put various vegetables in your tomato pasta sauce.
- Pour a vegetable puree over the pasta, or make chutney to serve with chips or crackers.
strong>Trick #3: Serve Food the Way Your Child Likes It
- Perhaps your child does not have a general problem with the food itself, but with its texture.
- If your child doesn’t like tomatoes, try tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, or tomato soup.
- If you don’t like a certain fruit, make a jelly out of it and put it on your breakfast sandwich or mix it into your yogurt for a snack.
- Try cooked or canned fruits instead of fresh fruits. Buy fruit canned in fruit juice instead of syrup, as these products have no added sugar.
- Make your child’s plate look interesting. For example, cut out the fruit and place it as a picture. Some butchers also sell special poland for children in the form of a funny face or a teddy bear.
Trick #4: Make desserts, sweets and chips an extra treat by eating healthy foods
- This strategy requires some determination on your part and could well result in a few tantrums, but it should be quite effective after a while. Never give up! Eventually, your child will give up.
- If your child turns down a certain healthy food, tell him that he will only get dessert if he finishes his lunch.
- Chips and sweets will only be given after eating the entire dinner.
- Just make sure you don’t overload your child’s plate. In that case, you could be punishing him for not overeating, which would certainly be wrong.
Trick #5: Get your kids to help prepare the food
- Children are much more willing to eat a meal when they have helped prepare it.
- Give your child any task that he can do, such as peeling the fruit, cutting the vegetables, stirring the food, etc. The more you involve him in the cooking process, the better.
By following these five tricks, your child will finally be eating at least some of the healthy foods. Focus on one food or trick at a time, and when your child accepts this food, move on to the next. Your child has developed her eating habits over time and will only gradually change them.