Sometimes in today’s food markets, it can be hard to find things that are healthy for your children to eat and therefore, it can be hard for you children to want to eat healthy foods.
Here are some ideas of ways you can motivate your children to choose health over junk:
- Put your children’s favorite fruits in plain sight and make it available to eat throughout the day when they get hungry. If you put it at their eye level, they will think to ask for it first.
- Have vegetables cut up and ready for quick snacks. Remember that kids love dipping things, so provide the dip along with the veggies and they’ll dive right in!
- Hide vegetables in main dishes by blending them up really small. You can put carrots in spaghetti sauce and they are none the wiser. You could use the ideas in the books The Sneaky Chef
or Deceptively Delicious. - Let them grow things that they would enjoy eating. My mom recently had sunflower seed sprouts on her window sill. She let all the kids snip some off and they thought it was great fun eating the greens of the sunflower seeds. They’re very nutritionally dense and easy to grow, too. They’re also great in salads!
- Lead by example. If they’re not seeing you eat healthy things, why would they want to choose to do so?
- Don’t buy the bad stuff. If it isn’t in the house, it won’t be an option!
- Teach them about nutrition and why they need to eat more fruits and vegetables. Then, let them help to plan out the meals using their knowledge.
- Make it into a game. Let them keep a sticker chart of when they ate at least 5 vegetables a day, or if they got so many colors in per day, etc.
- Use smoothies as special treats. Fill them with fruits and use it as a replacement to ice cream or make it their breakfast. Add fresh spinach to them to make a bright green colored smoothie that still tastes great!
- Make eating the right foods fun. Cut it up into fun shapes that kids love!
or 
.
How do you motivate your children to eat healthy foods?
Leave a Reply