Most children hear the word vegetables and they run the other way. If you don’t know what vegetables look like, they are that food that was pushed to the edge of your child’s plate and the only thing that remains once the meal is finished. Every parents ultimate goal is to get their child to eat the dreaded vegetables. So how do you do it?
Get ‘Em While They’re Young
In theory, if you eat a ton of vegetables while your pregnant and then do the same if you decide to breastfeed, then your baby will be predisposed to like vegetables because they’ve already been eating them for their entire life… but what if you didn’t do this?
Make their first solids, veggies.
When my daughter first began to eat solids, I gave her A LOT of vegetables. Spinach, squash, broccoli, peas, you name it, she was eating it. And I didn’t introduce her to fruit first, I gave her vegetables. There were certain vegetables that she never liked (eggplant) but I sure tried to get her to eat them. I made all of her food from scratch, so I made sure that the vegetables were perfectly seasoned for mouth watering pleasure. But the reality is, at that point, she’d never eaten food before, so anything that she ate was going to taste new and exciting. I just decided to start her off on the right foot. Until she started breaking out in a rash from eating it, spinach was her favorite food.
You decide their diet, so choose well.
One thing that I NEVER gave her in her first year was processed sugar. I didn’t add sugar to anything that she ate. I also didn’t give her juice, candy, baked goods, nothing. She ate plain yogurt with pureed fruit and vegetables added in. She liked plain yogurt so much that I thought that maybe I was missing out, so I tried it. I wasn’t missing anything. Even with added fruit, I couldn’t swallow plain yogurt.
I know what you’re thinking, if you don’t give your kid sugar, when they finally taste it, they’re going to go crazy for it. I did give her natural sugar. She ate fruits to include A LOT of avocado, but she didn’t like most traditional fruits. This picture is her first time eating bananas… She didn’t even like apples or mangos. Ellie’s preference was for blueberries or raspberries, also known as not the sweetest of fruits, but packed full of nutrients.
Her first birthday was the first time that she was given any food that had added sugar. I baked her birthday cake and she pushed it away and asked for the vegetables.
If All Else Fails
If all else fails go for the nuclear plan and hide them. Hide vegetables in EVERYTHING. I put pureed vegetables in spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, bread recipes, fruit purees (really vegetable purees with a dash of fruit), ice cream, shoot, if I make it, you can be sure that vegetables are in there somewhere. I have even gone so far as to make baby sized enclosed pies that have vegetables hidden inside so that she and her friends eat vegetables without even seeing them, but love them and ask for more!
The other key is to let your child help you cook. When they are the chef, they’ll eat whatever was made because they made it!
