The Kid-Veggie Relationship

Howdy:  sorry to have been away for a bit.  Here’s something from Tamara Duker Freuman, taken from US News

You probably have heard of kids NOT loving vegetables, either from your own or someone elses.  Here are some ways to raise children who happily eat a variety of vegetables.

• Author Ellyn Satter gives great advice to parents when she says that their job is not to get vegetables into kids, but it is to prepare and offer a variety of healthful foods (including veggis) throughout the day.  If veggis are on the table, you have done your job.  Kids can decide whether they will eat them.  Parents should remain visibly agnostic and emotionally uninvested.  Note:  the meal table should not contain 1 veggi with all else unhealthy.  All the food on the table needs to be healthy except on special ocasions.
• Vitamins:  diversify them!  Offer different foods that contain the same vitamins.  For example:  your kids do not like spinach, carrots, squash?  Try mango, dried apricots, baked sweet potato fries (ALL have Vitamin A).  What if they put up their noses at broccoli & red peppers?  Try strawberries, kiwi or cantaloupe for some Vitamin C.  Folate-rich leafy greens, asparagus or beets are not on the top of popularity lists:  offer chickpeas, papaya or oranges.  Cereals & Bread products also are fortified with vitamins & minerals, and can be sufficient for children’s smaller needs than yours.
• Help vegis become appealing:  try peanut sauce, ranch dip, cheese sauce, pesto, salsas.  Use butter &/or garlic…. & keep reintroducing.
• Think outside the side (dish):  Try canned pumkin puree and a dash of cinnamon in panckae mix or shredded carrots or zucchini in whole grain muffins.  Portable new snacks can be cucumber spears, edamame, roased seaweed sheets, freeze dried greenbeans.  THE MORE YOU OFFER VEGETABLES, THE MORE VEGETABLES YOUR CHILD IS LIKELY TO EAT.
• Don’t give up!   If you don’t serve vegetables, how can you expect them to eat vegetables? You never know which day your child’s broccoli binge may arrive.
• Be the example.  Family meals are an important time for kids to learn desired mealtime behaviors. It’s important for your child to see others eating a variety of foods, and doing so can often inspire them to at least try a new vegetable, even if they don’t like it right away.

Good luck!  Happy experimenting!