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How to Get Kids to Love Vegetables
How do food marketers get your kids wanting and craving to eat snacks and junk food? They make the snacks look fun and colorful! They serve them in small bags of bright orange, cute, mini goldfish or jiggly and squishy textured worms or perfectly rounded colorful little buttons with chocolate in the middle. Getting children to eat healthy is another story! Vegetables are fresh and don’t come in cutesy decorated packages, nor are they loaded with the allure of sweetness that sugar is guaranteed to provide, so its up to parents to find creative ways to get kids to eat them.
With a few simple tricks, you can soon have your children eating healthy.
Give choices
Children like to have choices but will also eat the foods they are used to seeing being eaten, so they’re not likely to ask for unhealthy foods if they’re not made an option.
Pita Jungle’s Kids’ Menu offers your kids the opportunity to pick and choose nutrient-packed options from all four food groups, to put together a well-balanced meal. The kids menu is fun and colorful and clearly illustrates how they can choose something from each group (most groups offer four or five options) to build a nicely proportioned plate:
- a vegetable; broccoli, spinach, carrots or cucumber slices
- a grain or carbohydrate
- a protein
- a seasonal fruit
Be a good role model
Kids also want to be like their parents and love to copy their behavior. So, if your kids see you eating your vegetables at home and in restaurants, they’ll be more likely to try them themselves.
Add vegetables as a side or appetizer
You can get your children eating healthy and eating more vegetables by mixing them into foods and by always adding them as a side dish. Or start with an appetizer before dinner – a plate of raw vegetables or greens and vegetables mixed into a salad.
Offer veggies as a snack
Another surefire way to get your kids to love vegetables is to serve either as a snack, appetizer or during meals, some raw or lightly steamed vegetables with dips, such as Middle Eastern hummus or tzatziki, two main staples that are always family favorites at Pita Jungle.