Fruits and vegetables are very important food groups in our daily diet. They contain essential vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber. Although we all agree that fruits and vegetables are supposed to be an essential part of our children’s diet, many parents are still struggling with the question, “How to get my child to eat more of them?”
Some children are not willing to taste fruits and vegetables at all, while others eat only a small variety. Other children enjoy eating fruits and vegetables, but do not eat them regularly (every day). How can we encourage our children to eat more fruits and vegetables? How can we combine them into meals, and what are the most important rules for encouraging children to try and eat more?
Five top tips to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables:
- Visibility
If the child can’t see the fruit or veggies, they do not exist in his mind! Children can go to the refrigerator and take out a fruit or vegetable for themselves, but will typically not do so if the fruit or vegetable is not visible (at their eye-level) and ready to eat. They will not reach for the fruit or vegetable if it is still packed in a produce bag or stashed deep in a refrigerator drawer. If you want your child to eat more fruits and vegetables by choice, you need to place them in a convenient place which the child sees whenever he opens the refrigerator door. - Accessibility
If the fruits and/or vegetables are washed and sliced in a nice bowl, chances are greater that the child will take a bit, even if he didn’t plan to eat them before he opened the refrigerator or walked past them in the kitchen. Yes, sliced fruits and vegetables can be a nice afternoon snack, but they need to be easy for the child to grab. If fruits and vegetables are more accessible to the child, chances are higher that he will eat more of them. - Exposure to many senses
The child should be able to see, smell and touch the fruit or vegetable. The more senses stimulated, the better. The ability to investigate the food will help the child fear it less and will help his appetite grow. Many children are tactile and love to carefully examine the foods they eat! - Variety
Don’t serve the same foods in the same way all the time. Vary the shape and form of the fruits and vegetables you serve. For instance, cut the cucumber into sticks at times and round disks at other times. You can serve fruit cut into strips or cubes, in a “fruit salad” or even as “fruit skewers” (children love them!). Fruit can be combined with a yogurt “dip,” and vegetables can be used to “scoop” hummus/guacamole/cottage cheese and more. Try to think “outside the box” and be creative about the way you serve fruits and vegetables to your child. Kids (and adults) love fun food! - By Personal Example
Children learn by imitation! They need to see parents eating fruits and vegetables as part of their meals to establish this as an eating habit. It may give children the opposite message if they have to listen to parents go on about how important it is to eat fruits and vegetables without actually seeing the parents eat them. Make sure to combine vegetables in most of your family meals, and offer fruit as part of a snack or as a healthy dessert. And, of course, eat the fruits and vegetables yourself rather than just expecting your children to eat them.
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Yael Dror is a Pediatric Nutritionist. She holds a Master’s degree in Physiology from Tel Aviv University and a Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and most importantly, Yael is a mother of 3 active children. Yael is a former professional athlete and is a co-founder of Habitz. |