Nutrition can be an emotionally loaded subject for parents: What their child is eating, whether they’re eating enough, whether they’re eating the ‘right’ foods. Worry about food seems to start as soon as baby transitions to solid food, and sometimes even before. Mealtimes can become a minefield of tension, rules and conflict, as parents resort to bribery and deception to assuage their fears about whether their children are nourished. Vegetable consumption seems to be a really ‘hot’ topic in many households.
One tomato sauce producer surveyed parents to find that over half used tomato sauce as a tool to induce their children to eat specific foods. I think the kids have a point: munching through half a plate of plain greens and plain vegetables, without any ‘trimmings’ feels worthy if you’re focused on improving your nutrition, but it can be pretty boring too. Vegetables shouldn’t be boring, and they don’t have to be (for children or adults!)
Here are some ideas to help children become more interested in vegetables:
- First, enliven the plate. This is why tomato sauce has become so popular – because it adds a piquant flavour to what can otherwise taste quite bland. But you don’t have to use sugar and salt-laden tomato sauce. Make up a tomato-based vegetable stew of finely diced onion, tomato, tomato paste, zucchini and capsicum. Freeze in portion sizes and use as a sauce for plain steamed vegetables.
- Adults enjoy vegetables in interesting sauces, or cooked with interesting spice mixes: Your child may too.
- Be a role model: Children really do watch and absorb what they see you doing. If you don’t enjoy vegetables, they probably won’t either.
- Make it fun: Arrange the vegetables on the plate to make pictures: Mashed potato topped with a carrot nose, green bean eyebrows, zucchini circle eyes and capsicum slice for a mouth. Or, try ‘ants on a log’: celery sticks filled with nut butter and topped with sultana ‘ants’.
- Keep the good food front & centre: A bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen bench. Fresh vegetable sticks and dips at eye level, easily accessed as soon as they open the fridge door. This is particularly important for after school, when children need a small healthy snack to see them through until dinner.
- Take your children on ‘selective shopping’: A visit to the fruit & veg store, or the market, where you allow them to select some items from the colourful displays, and discuss ways in which you could prepare them. Shop in the supermarket without them, so the kids aren’t enticed by the equally colourful, but not so healthy packaged goods.
Enjoy some creative fun with vegetables and watch your children start to enjoy them too.
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