One of the key building blocks of a health is good nutrition. Getting children started on the right path couldn’t be more important – they are being bombarded from every corner with marketing for foods that are not the best choices.
Yet sometimes it can be challenging to get the Lil ones to cooperate with our best intentions. Hopefully you will find one or two of these tips useful!
Don’t Give Up
Children can reject a food over and over and over again… experts say over 20 times, and then magically accept it. In our home – instead of saying “I don’t like that” we say that “we don’t like “X food NOW”.
Note – This is especially true with infants and first foods. Continue to re-introduce rejected foods and don’t give up.
We have discussions about the examples of foods that we didn’t like at one time, but now love. It helps the Lil’s learn to understand our tastes are ever changing.
Don’t underestimate the power of talking with them about the food and nutrition. Keep it age appropriate – but get them involved!
Get the Lil’s Involved in the Kitchen
Cooking with your children gets them involved in the process and in my experience they are more likely to expand there palette with something they’ve been involved in creating.
This tip does take a little — LOT of patience, so don’t overuse it for the sake of maintaining your own sanity! Keep their tasks age appropriate, set the rules up clearly, then let them help measure, mix, wash and spin away. The whole point is to get them connecting with wholesome food. Talk about what part of the body the food is good for during the process – just the basic
Take them to the Farmer’s Market
The farmer’s markets are so much fun for children! It’s like a festival to them, much more exciting that the grocery store!
My Lil’s graze on the samples the vendors put out like it’s a buffet – and I love it. They get to try foods they wouldn’t normally taste. I make sure they are doing most of their grazing from vendors I frequent – so they don’t get upset.
Persimmons, Kiwi and Plum
Taking them to the market also exposes them to foods you don’t like and aren’t likely to buy for them to try. You might be surprised to find out what they love.
Be sure to buy a few of their choices too – they love having control – this is a great place to give them choices!
Tip – Don’t get too excited and overbuy when you find out they like something new! I can get a little excited when my children like something new and buy way too much!
Find a Dip They Love
Never underestimate the ability of Ranch Dressing or Hummus to get you lil’ happily munching on a raw or cooked carrot! Don’t reserve the dips for raw foods… they can work on steamed selections too.
My lil’s eat salad – with a lot of ranch dressing – It’s much easier to wean them off of the ranch dressing than it is to get them eating a bare salad.
Experiment. Find out what healthy choices they will eat without a fuss and accommodate them in those areas. Lil Diva likes her red peppers on the side… not mixed in with her salad – fine.
Dice It Up
Every week I dice up a batch of Veggies that I use for cooking meals the entire week! The key is that I use a fine dicer that let’s the specific vegetable become unidentified. Learn all about the dicing technique HERE.
This mix goes into everything – the lil’s get the taste and texture of an assortment of veggies – without being able to reject any one in particular. Not to mention the extra servings of fruits and veggies they are getting every week with no extra effort.
There are so many other ways to get nutritious foods into our families diets – I hope these tips fuel your creativity. Don’t be shy! Share some the techniques that work for you & your family!
Thank you to Babycenter for Sponsoring this Post!
This post was sponsored by First Five California – they are calling on parents to take a month long pledge prevent childhood obesity and feed five servings of fruits & veggies every day for one month First 5 group on BabyCenter. We make it our goal to get 10 in the diva home – that way when we don’t get to 10 – we still hit the basic requirement of 5! First 5 is a California organization dedicated to helping educate parents and caregivers about the importance of fitness, nutrition and reading during the first 5 years of life. In their BabyCenter group, you can also pledge to remove chips and soda for a month.
Have a new baby? Pledge to introduce fruits and veggies and don’t forget to skip the white rice cereal altogether!
FDA Disclosure – This was a sponsored post – I was compensated for my time & effort. All opinions and beliefs – as always – remain my own and are not for sale.
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I totally agree with all your suggestions in this post!!! Getting little ones connected with their food is so important…parents also need to remember the key ingredient when it comes to getting their kids on board…FUN!!!I am going to go check out the First 5 group! What a great campaign! I’m on a similar mission…getting kids to eat a rainbow of colourful fruits and veggies everyday!I think parents have a lot more power than they realize! It just takes some knowledge, creativity and fun to get kids eating healthy!Great article!Kia
I love your mission too! I have to be honest, I often feel like my biggest challenge is other parents who aren’t on the same page (including my own husband!). I feel like half of my battles are a direct result of what my children see other children eating.
Great suggestions! It’s strange because McKenna loves vegetables but doesn’t really like fruit and Hudson is the complete opposite, loves fruit but hates vegetables. It’s always a challenge over at our house!
Great tips. The one I hear most often from parents I work with is #1: I give up! I try to remind them that it can take 5, 10, 15 times of trying a new food or taste before they’ll warm up to it. I know my own kids will love something today, and turn up their noses at it tomorrow. If we’re persistent, and creative, they’ll come around.
Fantastic suggestions, I would also add to the list the introduction of first foods, I think this is a huge problem that no one is looking at, babies first experience with food in the US is usually awful, they grow up with such a distaste for food because it tasted so bad, it is no surprise that they gravitate so easily towards everything salty or sweet. How do you get a baby to love a 2 year old cooked peas? How do you transition a child from eating overly processed 2 year old cooked baby food to eating fresh salad at 14th. It is important to start from the very first spoonful introducing freshly made foods with vibrant colors and wholesome taste, every parent you talk to say the same thing ‘gosh baby food taste really bad especially the veggies’ so it is no surprise that babies grow up hating their foods. Fresh raw peas is sweet, steam peas is even sweeter so how come when it is pureed for the baby is taste bad? Let’s change the way we introduce them to food. Any yes no rice cereal for us, my son’s first food was butternut squash. Keep the good work.
Cheers