Over the years working in childcare I have however come up against many children who aren't, and many parents who are desperate to get their children eating healthier food.
I have come up with several techniques and tools for parents in my time.
One we made for all our children was a 5 a day tracker; a laminated picture of a plate with 5 white circles on it. Along with the plate each child was given a set of laminated fruit and vegetable images which they could stick into the plate after they had eaten each daily portion, we left it to the parents to decide the reward scheme that ran alongside it.
This post is a chance for parents to share their own ideas when meeting the challenge of ensuring our children get their 5 a day, do you hide the vegetables? Do you have mealtimes battles everyday?
The challenge of raising children who hopefully grow up understanding the importance of having fruit and vegetables in their diet, and having them enjoy the flavours and diversity of a healthy diet is one most parents will agree on.
Even if we pop to the kebab house occasionally, Ssssssh.
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Over the years have tried a few things but at the moment I am finding three things that really work. The first is that we have started growing a few veges, this means that children are really involved in growing and tending to them and so when it comes to eating them are quite excited. Secondly we make our own pizzas and put lots of veges on them - again this makes eating veges fun. Finally I go for good old food hiding and hide veges in meatballs or fishcakes. Getting kids to eat well is hard work!
ReplyDeleteI find the best way to get my toddler to eat vegetables (asides from peas and sometimes carrots which he will eat when in full unhidden view) is to disguise them in his meals. When I make cottage pies or spaghetti bologneses I hide several vegetables within the sauce either by grating them or chopping them finely. For a simple pasta sauce I roast a mixture of vegetables and then blend them which can also be used as a pizza topping.
ReplyDeleteI find that this hidden vegetable 'game' works with Daddy aswell! X
The Boy will eat anything if I put it in a cheese sauce!
ReplyDeleteAside from that; broccoli ice-cream anyone? (Heston style of course!)
disguise is the keyword of course. i usually make a tom sauce with pureed veg in it. i sometimes add haricot beans to make home made baked beans. sweetcorn is usually quite fun to eat too
ReplyDeleteOk, this isn't really a tip, more advice on what not to do. I watched a program once where the parents decided that using food colouring to make cauliflower and other veg bright luminous yellow, purple and various other colours to encourage their kids to eat it up. It looked all kinds of wrong, they didn't eat it, don't do it!
ReplyDeleteI get my 2 yr old to stand at the fridge with me & help me make him a snack box. I make sure that there is always cucumber, carrots, sweetcorn (cooked or raw), cherry tomatoes and apples ("bapples" as he calls them) as they are all his favs but then add other fruit or veg and he carries his snack box around all day munching happily on the food he's helped prepare. He often goes back to the fridge & comes back with other stuff he'd like added & I just have to make sure all the naughty stuff stays in a drawer out of his reach!
ReplyDeleteWe find that three things work well for our little toddler and always have-
ReplyDelete1. Pretend that you are going to eat the spoonful so she has to eat it quick before mummy/ daddy/ nanny does.
2. The classic "here comes the bike/bus/train" and we let her choose the mode of transport.
3. I often say "you can't feed yourself this can you? I bet you can't do it!" then she often likes to show off and starts loading it into her mouth.
Good luck all and thanks for other tips! @boomakestwo x