Tips to Get Kids to Eat Their Veggies

Apr29

Fruits and vegetables are full of vitamins and minerals that help keep us healthy. Making sure we are incorporating enough fruits and vegetables into our diets can be a challenge at times for both adults and children.

So, how many fruits and vegetables should we be eating? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a Fruit and Vegetable Calculator so you can calculate the amount recommended for you and your children.

Typically, fruits are an easier choice for children to eat because they are sweet in taste. If you have trouble getting your children to eat their veggies, WebMD.com provides some clever tips on ways to get them to eat them.

They suggest several unique ideas I just love. Some of my favorites are:

Lead by example – Parents need to make sure they are eating their vegetables in front of their children so they can see that their parents are enjoying them.
Make your own popsicles and smoothies that have vegetables in them.
- A Vitamix allows you to “sneak” vegetables into a smoothie
Make vegetables a required part of the meal, i.e., “Do you want carrots, broccoli, pea pods or cucumbers?”
- There are delicious tasting all-natural “Green drinks powders” that taste really good since they have a chocolate cocoa added to them, this can be an option to the actual vegetable if they give push-back.

My kids know that they have to eat at least one vegetable at every meal, so even when we eat out, they make sure they get one with their dinner, even if they have to order it off the side dishes.

I hope you find these ideas as fun and helpful as I have.

What’s your go-to veggie for your kids?

About the Author

As a working mother with two small children, Candice Imwalle understands the challenge of incorporating healthy eating into daily life. In her job as a medical devices regional manager she encounters patients regularly who suffer from vascular disease and Type 2 Diabetes, most commonly caused by a lifetime of poor food choices. Inspired by her job, and the rising obesity rates for both children and adults in the United States, Imwalle decided to search for children’s books about the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle for her kids to read. The lack of options for this kind of children’s literature motivated Imwalle to write her own book – Sir Morgan and the Kingdom of Horrible Food. With a drive to educate children early, so they make good food choices and have a healthy adult life, Imwalle enlisted the writing help of her daughter Isabella and son Cameron, ages five and eight at the time) to assure the book was fun and interesting to younger readers.

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