How To Get Your Kids To Eat Healthy Part 2

We’re back with the next round of tips to help get your kids on board with a real food diet! 

Try different versions of the same food 

You’ve put sticks of celery on your kid’s plate multiple times hoping each time that they just try one teeny tiny bite of the powerful antioxidant veggie. Each time they’ve pushed it away or complained that they don’t like celery – that it’s too crunchy or too cold or that it has a funny taste.

You can continue to present celery the exact same way (and that’s fine, one day they might actually take a bite!) but sometimes switching up the presentation or the way you prepare a food can make all the difference. Instead of doing sticks of celery try doing smaller bite size pieces. Or make baked celery fries.

Try adding it with a dip (like Brittany’s homemade ranch) or putting even two dips on their plate so they get to choose which dip to use. Or say you’ve been making steamed broccoli to no avail – try roasting them until they are crunchy, serving them raw with a dip (kids love being able to dip things!), cooking them in the air fryer, serving them in bigger pieces as ‘trees’ that the kids munch off of or smaller tiny pieces that they can eat individually. The options are endless! Get creative and see what happens. 

Be brave in introducing new foods 

It can be so frustrating to work hard in the kitchen making a new recipe only to have your kids decline it once everyone has sat down at the table.  Don’t let that deter you from continuing to make new things! Lots of parents get stuck in a rut of serving the same foods to their kids because they know they will eat them and they want their kids to actually eat. But your kids need to know that even if they don’t eat something it doesn’t mean that it will go away forever.

They need to know that food variety happens at their house and will happen everywhere else, too. This is the beginning of building their palate and you need to help them become comfortable with that idea. Continue to try new recipes and serve it to them (in really small portions, if you need to) and talk about how important it is to try new foods. Sometimes adding in a story about yourself with this helps too. I like to let my kids know that for the longest time I only ate carbs and always felt so awful, but once I started trying new foods I realized I loved so many things that I had never tried before! 

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Let them pick out a new fruit or veggie at the grocery store 

This one is easy and tends to always work! As you head to the grocery store with your kids let them know that they get to pick out one new fruit or vegetable that they’ve never tried before. Make it a big deal. Let them get their own basket or cart. Let them take their time walking around looking at all of their options (this is a great way to expose them to an assortment of vegetables on their own turf). Once they decide which one they want praise them tremendously talking about how they made a wonderful choice and how you’d love their help in cooking and preparing it at home.

Then, after getting the rest of your items at the store, go home and immediately make or prepare whatever fruit or veggie they picked. This is important because they are already hyped up about this whole idea and if you let too much time pass then they could lose interest. 9 times out of 10 my kids have been all in with this and have ended up trying whatever veggie or fruit they picked.

They may only take one bite but who cares! They tried a new food and they helped prepare it and that’s all that I asked of them. If your kids really enjoy doing this (even if they don’t end up taking a bite) make it a regular thing every time you go to the store. Regardless if they try it they are still learning about new fruits and veggies and partaking in the cooking process and that’s amazing all on its own! 

Have your kids pick out a recipe to make 

As you’re meal planning for the week hand over one of your favorite recipe books (like the Instant Loss cookbook) to your child and tell them you’d love some help in picking out a recipe. Whenever I do this with my oldest he really takes his time looking at all of the recipes and deciding which one he wants me to make that week.

This tip doesn’t have anything to do with your kids actually trying new foods but this is such a great way to just get them involved in the entire cooking process. We don’t just want our kids to eat well, we want them to learn how to cook well too, right? So that when they leave the nest they’re able to make good food choices on their own as well as cook them. And – your kids like being included in things like this! 

Let them serve themselves 

Dinners are typically kind of frantic at our house – our kids are whining, everyone is hungry, and it’s getting close to bed time so it’s very rare that I’m able to put our dinner in actual serving bowls and put them on the table to serve ourselves just like my mom did when we had family dinners growing up. But, when I’m able to do it, the kids love being able to help themselves and build their plate on their own. It gives them independence and more often than not they end up putting more veggies on their plate than I would have! Even if you don’t get fancy and put everything in serving bowls on the table your kids can still serve themselves straight from the pan or oven dish – just let it cool down first! 

You can find the first 5 tips for getting your kids on board with a real food diet here and we still have 5 more tips coming your way, too. Have you tried any of the tips yet? How have they worked? We’d love to know so leave a comment below with your experience! Remember, this is a marathon not a sprint. Getting kids on board with real food takes a lot of time and patience – you’ve got this mama!

Sloane Simon, a mom of 3 young boys living in Dallas, TX, is passionate about health and wellness and on a mission to teach her kids the importance of a real, whole foods diet. Last January she started an Instagram page (@simonsaysrealfood) with a blog and website in the works to chronicle this real food journey with her family. She shares recipe recommendations, lunchbox ideas, tips for cooking with kids, and tips for getting kids on board with a real food diet. She is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner.