“”How can we get kids to eat more vegetables?”” The question is one that many parents and caregivers struggle with. Whether they are cooking for themselves or others, it’s difficult to find ways to add more veggies to people’s diets. Fortunately, there are some hacks that will allow you to increase the number of vegetables in your meals without too much effort.
We’ll start with a simple one: add spinach leaves to smoothies. Spinach is a good source of iron, which children need for their growing bodies. But when you blend it up into a smoothie, it just tastes like fruit.
The other hack is adding veggies into dishes when they’re already almost done cooking. That way, the final dish ends up with a bunch of flavor, but still gives you the option to add in veggies at the end. If you’re making spaghetti or tacos, you can throw some frozen or fresh veggies into the mix right before it’s done cooking. This way, they don’t taste like “veggies”, and your kids might even like them.
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The last hack is probably the easiest: tell kids they’re eating trees instead of calling broccoli by its name. When you put it like that, who would ever want to eat a piece of broccoli?
And if you’re making a pasta dish, call it “tree spaghetti”. Kids will be curious to know what they’re eating.
Although it’s important to get children to eat their vegetables, be careful not to make a big deal out of it. If you continuously have them try your “vegetable-filled” foods and tell them that they’re eating trees or spinach leaves, they’ll begin to associate these things with something bad. Always let kids know how healthy different kinds of food are, and how delicious they can be.
Whatever your way is to get kids to eat more veggies, it’s always important to enjoy the process. The best way to avoid quitting a habit entirely is to have fun doing it. And cooking for yourself or others is what allows everyone at the table (or in front of the screen.) to do just that.
These hacks are easy ways to get your kids (and yourself.) to eat more vegetables. You’ll find that as you incorporate them into your meals, they’ll become second nature and you won’t need to think about them. Why not give them a try?