Why is it so difficult to get my children to eat healthy food, especially when trying to increase their fruit & vegetable intake as part of an improving diet? 

Thinking about it, what are children bombarded with every day? Advertising for sweets, snacks and fast food. Fast food chains create menus for kids with toys and other incentives to buy. Shops have rows and rows of sweets at check out as do gas stations. Even so called healthy food when you really look at their nutritional information can disappoint. There are many healthy options produced which are healthy but recommend reading labels to increase awareness of nutritional value.

Fruits & vegetables are not patented, meaning they have little attraction for companies to promote. They are also natural foods, offering nutrition as close to how nature intended as can be. Very few people argue against eating fruit & vegetables and many wish they would eat more and their kids would eat more. Life is full of time demands and distractions and preparing fruit & vegetables seems to take more time to prepare when easy foods seem to take less. This must not however be the case.

Here we can have a shift in paradigm. This is not only about healthy eating, but a lifestyle. Every normal family values quality time together. Taking the right approach to introducing children to fruit & vegetables can combine the aim of eating healthier with another significant goal of creating quality time for interaction and lifelong learning.

Teaching children how to cut fruit and vegetables (and they love cutting them up 😊), making pictures with them, looking to arrange on plates beautifully, deciding how to serve them, help choose what fruit & vegetables to buy when out shopping all create quality interaction and a love for fruit & vegetables step by step. Remenber the saying, No Involvement, No Commitment. Works for adults, works for children.

The more involvement and feeling of working together our children can have (and adults too, the bigger children 😊), the more commitment to improving diet we will have. This blog will aim to explore tried & now trusted ideas how to get kids to buy in to eating fruit & vegetables. Look out for more blogs coming!

 

Is playing with food good or bad?

Have you ever noticed how your children will have fun doing almost anything, as long as they are involved? How you buy expensive toys and still they can have more fun making paper airplanes because it is their creation?

The same principle holds for getting them interested in eating healthy food. To combat the waves of commercial advertising for less healthy foods get them involved in shopping, choosing fruit and vegetables, preparing them, Let them feel a level of control and input and see how their enthusiasm slowly (or quickly} grows .....

Kids love learning! They also love putting things in the shopping cart and feeling responsible. Have fun letting them choose fruit and vegetables, with your guidance and this will increase their motivation to prepare and try them.

Next step ..... get them helping in the kitchen! 

Children love nothing more than helping their parents (granted not all the time, but when it is made fun they do). The younger you can start them helping out after helping choose the fruit and vegetables they want the better and quicker this will go. 

Showing them different ways to prepare different items, how to cut them, ideas how to put them on a plate and how to serve them, making a "cooking video", there are many creative ways to get your children engaged in preparing healthy food.

Lastly back to the beginning and the age old question ..... Is it OK to play with food?

If incorporated into preparation this can be very useful. We are not talking about throwing food around, but make eating the food fun. Try pairing up foods, making food shapes to be recognised, use sliced up food and vegetables as snacks at family time and when friends come round, have a checklist of fruit and vegetables to be tried and mark them off as tried ...... every idea will add something positive to your journey.