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Home Articles REAL Food Picky & Adventurous Eaters Loving Vegetables?
Loving Vegetables? Print E-mail
By far, one of the most frequent challenges moms share with us is that their children won't eat vegetables. And, since we know as moms how important vegetables are to overall health, it's a constant source of low-level (and sometimes high-level) stress for many moms.

Often I hear moms saying, “I give him a multi-vitamin since he won't even touch vegetables.” or some variation of that statement. The problem is, even if the multi-vitamin is of great quality, you just can't replicate all the benefits of eating the real veggies. Scientists are finding more and more out about the important phytonutrients – which result in all those gorgeous colors – and how they impact our health in zillions of ways. So, the trick for us moms is to find ways to help our kids eat, and hopefully even enjoy, vegetables.
 
In talking with moms over the years individually and through my classes, I have met some who say their children eat and even love vegetables. They often don't understand why so many kids resist them. Based on talking with all these moms and my own personal experiences with our three children, some common threads running through families whose children willingly eat vegetables include:
  • Expectations: “It's the way we eat.” Vegetables are abundant in the house and are eaten for snacks and meals, and this is modeled by parents every day who visibly enjoy eating a variety of vegetables.
  • Consistency: Parents don't give in to resistance or tantrums. There is some kind of rule about eating vegetables and once the kids realize mom and dad mean it, they eventually stop resisting or battling.
  • Equality: Vegetables get treated like other foods. They aren't made into what you have to eat in order to eat the perceived 'better' food like fruit or dessert.
  • Experiences: Almost always the families include the kids in cooking, vegetable gardening, shopping and putting food away, visiting farmers' markets and setting up and clearing the table.
  • Conversations: The families eat together and have real conversations about food – the tastes, the colors, the shapes, the smells, the textures.
  • Education: The parents of kids who eat vegetables spend time educating kids through books, talk, movies, and more about how what we eat directly affects our health, sports performance, learning ability and appearance.
  • Encouragement: Parents encourage and invite kids to try new foods and celebrate their adventurous eating, whether it is a perceived healthy food or not.
  • Prioritizing: These parents make healthy eating a priority, knowing it's a foundation for everything else we want to do in life. They schedule time to cook and to pack healthy meals and snacks.
  • Responsibility: The parents view taking care of our bodies through eating well, being active and other means as a responsibility that comes along with the opportunity we have to be and stay healthy.
Do the families I've met over the years all do each of these things everyday? No. Do I do most of these things consistently? No. What happens is that in families whose kids will eat vegetables, some of these are happening daily and others go in streaks. It takes time and consistency, like everything else we do as moms. It can be hard, especially with our crazy lives. If you want your kids to eat more vegetables, choose one or two of the above areas and make a plan for yourself and be consistent, even when it is hard and you are exhausted, and I remember when I had a 3 ½ year old and 1 year old twins what it felt like to be exhausted by all of this. Hold in your mind a vision of your healthy children enjoying vegetables each day and stay focused on that vision as you keep trying to figure out what will work for your family.

Try the 2-Bite Rule as Soon as Kids are Old Enough to Be Eating on Their Own: 2 Bites of Each Food Offered Have to Make it To Your Tummy. Be Consistent and Celebrate Adventurous Eating!

Learn How to Raise or Transform Your Child to be an Adventurous Eater!
 

Angelle Batten, MEd. is a Holistic Health & Parenting Coach and co-founder of nourishMD. She teaches parents how to feed their children REAL food and parent in a more connected way every day - so despite a crazy busy life they can raise healthier, happier children who make the world a better place.