Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods

Is mealtime often a struggle for you and your children? Do you have a difficult time getting them to eat healthy foods? If so, join the club. Most parents have these same issues with the kids, at least some of the time.

Instead of allowing the dinner table to become a battleground between parent and child, try using some creativity to make it more fun. Fights with your child at mealtime do nothing beneficial for the family dinner setting or for the digestive system. If you're imaginative enough, you'll find your child eating more healthy foods in no time (without the arguments!). Although kids are unpredictable and the results may vary according to each child, here are a five tips to help get kids to eat healthy foods and enjoy it, too.

Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods #1 - Serve healthy foods in an ice cream cone. Kids like variety. Instead of handing your child the same old peanut butter sandwich or a bowl of cottage cheese, try this. Stir things up a bit and offer your child an ice cream cone filled with cottage cheese, nut and fruit mixture, tuna or yogurt. This is also a fast, easy trick for feeding an older kid on the run.

Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods #2 - Let them dunk the healthy foods in something. There's simply something appealing to kids about dipping their food into condiments. Offer your child ketchup, ranch dressing, hummus, or any other dipping sauce or condiment that does the trick and gets him eating. Be forewarned, it may not look pretty. In fact, watching your child dunk his peas into a pile of ketchup may be downright disgusting, but at least he'll be eating them.

Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods #3 - Don't push too hard if they don't like something. It is good to have kids try a variety of healthy foods, so they can decide which ones they like or don't like. If you come across foods your kids express a strong dislike for, don't make a big deal of it. Instead, acknowledge the fact that they were willing to try it and move on.

My daughter turned up her nose at cooked carrots and insisted she hated them even before tasting them. Our rule has always been that you can't say you don't like a food unless you actually try it. She did, and she still hated them. At first, I thought about forcing her to eat the vegetable anyway. After all, that's what I had to do when I was a kid. Then I remembered how I grew to hate some of those foods because of it and how it wasn't until several years into adulthood that I willingly ate them again. Instead of making a big production, I decided to offer her other healthy alternatives. In this instance, it simply means that she preferred her carrots raw. She still received the benefits from the vegetable, and it didn't create a stigma for her about eating carrots. When she came around and started trying them prepared in different ways - which she eventually did - I never made a fuss over it or reminded her how she use to dislike them. I simply let her eat them.

Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods #4 - Make healthy snacks readily available to kids. Keep washed and cut fruit and vegetables, yogurts, string cheese, and other healthy snacks for kids on an eye-level shelf in the refrigerator, so they reach for those items first when they want a quick snack.

Check out this healthy snack food recipe for kids you can make in advance. The recipe includes ingredients that will fill your children with a healthy assortment of fruit, fiber, protein, and antioxidants. As a parent, I know the importance of these things in my children's diet. I also understand the difficulty sometimes involved with convincing them to eat food that is healthy. The secret to this healthy snack food recipe is that kids love the taste so much they forget it's good for them!

Five Tips to Get Kids to Eat Healthy Foods #5 - Substitute and mix healthy foods into meals. Sometimes there are foods your child will shy away from no matter how hard you try. In those cases, you may have to draw on your creativity to conceal the healthy foods inside something more appealing to the child. Substitute cottage cheese or vanilla yogurt as a replacement for butter in your child's meals. Blend up vegetables or meats into a puree, and add them to a sauce your child loves.

One of the keys to getting kids to eat healthy foods is to offer variety of healthy foods. Children tend to stick to what they know and love. Keep offering different foods, and don't give up the first time your child rejects it. If you allow them to eat the same foods the same way every night, it will make them more inflexible to try new foods. Also, keeping the menu varied will help kids discover new, healthy foods they love and need to grow strong and healthy.

Other articles by this author:
Six Ways to Boost Your Child's Immunity
Creative Ways to Get Kids to Do Chores
When Your Toddler Refuses to Go to Bed

Resources:
"Getting Kids to Eat Healthy Foods" by Parents
"10 Ways to Raise Food-Smart Kids" by Children's Health at WebMD