Your quick and easy guide on how to make greens fun for kids!
Hands up if you’re fighting a constant battle to get your kids to eat their greens?
Most parents feel like this is a fight that you’re always destined to lose but with a few tricks, you can start to make greens seem a much more exciting prospect.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Not necessarily!
Here are 4 ways to make eating greens a whole lot more fun and appetizing for kids!
Get the kids involved in food preparation
Kids will often be a lot more interested in their food if they’re involved in preparing it. This can start with helping you to choose the right ingredients and working out what to make with them. Try taking them with you when you go food shopping and introduce them to the various greens that might end up on their plate to pique their interest.
Letting them have their say in what’s going to be dished up can mean that they’re more enthusiastic about what they’re eating, especially if you can bring them around to the idea that greens are something to be enjoyed and nourish the body giving them superpower strength. This is essential in learning how to make greens fun for kids.
Most kids will feel a lot more positive about the food they’re eating if they have been involved in its journey onto their plate, especially if you also try out some of the other tricks for helping them to love their greens.
If you have the outside space, you can even take things up a notch by actually growing your own veggies in a mini veggie garden so that your kiddos can see their food coming to life. Nurturing veggies and helping them to make it onto your family’s plates can be really powerful for changing how they see their greens
Make vegetables part of every meal
Instead of serving plain vegetables as a side dish and hoping that it will be well received, try mixing veggies into meals whenever possible. Most kids will never embrace the idea of plain vegetables, and let’s face it, it’s hardly the most appetizing prospect even for many adults!
One way to make greens more a staple in your family’s life is to make them a key part of as many meals as possible. Stir fries, casseroles, soups, stews, and pasta dishes are all perfect for this but if you get really creative, you can even find ways to add greens to kid friendly foods such as pizza (here’s the secret – blend up some spinach and spread it on a pizza base before you load it up with tomato!).
If kids can get used to the idea that veggies are an important part of a meal that they enjoy eating, it can make them a lot more open to eating them. Sauces are an easy way to disguise the true taste of greens such as broccoli. Whip up a delicious cheese based sauce and you may find that you get a lot less resistance!
Make the benefits more interesting
Tapping into your family’s pain points can make greens more appealing. Just saying “it’s healthy” and leaving it at that probably won’t get the job done. Most of us didn’t give much thought to our nutrition in our younger days and your kids may well think the same. But, helping them to see the value that eating their greens could help them to get stronger or give them super shiny hair and strong nails could do the trick.
It’s all about working out what your kids might wish they could achieve and persuading them that eating their greens is a great way to get there. All of a sudden, greens will now seem like something really cool that can be their friend and not the enemy.
Sneak the greens in
If you still don’t get anywhere with making them seem more appealing, you may need to get really sneaky and challenge yourself to find creative ways to hide them in their meals!
There’s a lot of ways you can sneak vegetables into meals that you may have never thought of. Incorporating spinach into an extra healthy pizza sauce is just one example.
You can also blend greens into tomato sauces and add extra vegetables to lasagna or spaghetti bolognese, for example. I love to pack extra greens into my kids’ smoothies, and I have gotten to be a master at changing the color with berries.
To mix up their lunches occasionally and especially during the winter months, I will give them a hearty soup or stew to nourish their bodies.
Want a little help and support for free?
Join The Free Sneaky Veg Program
Hands up if you find it impossible to get your kids to eat more vegetables?
For most parents, persuading kids to eat more vegetables is a major battle and sometimes, it’s just easier to sneak it in so there is no fuss!
Join us for The Sneaky Veg Challenge where, you’ll discover some of the ways you can do this.
With this 4 day challenge, you’ll learn some easy ways to add more vegetables to your family’s meals, without them even knowing that they’re there.
