Dr. Jay Gordon is a vegetarian that encourages a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. I am more of an omnivore, but I’ve learned so much from him about child nutrition and getting kids excited about eating healthy foods that I want to share some of it with you.
Teach her that fruit is the sweet.
Rainbow Fruit Kabobs: The Thrifty Mama
A berry tastes incredibly sweet unless you have just eaten an Oreo cookie. Help your child appreciate the sweetness of fruit by limiting artificial sweets including cakes, cookies, and most any of your favorite guilty pleasures. They don’t have to be her guilty pleasures!
Offer two bites of each vegetable until your child acquires a taste for it, but don’t force him to eat any certain food.
Two bites are manageable for a toddler. If he wants more, he can always ask for it. Forcing a child to eat his peas will, at best, be a power struggle between parent and child. At worst, it will cause an aversion to the green vegetables that instigated the fight.
Frozen Yogurt Covered Fruit: …in sock monkey slippers
Make a Bargain.
Try this: ‘You’d like more fruit? Okay! Eat one bite of your asparagus and then I’ll cut up some strawberries!’ We don’t encourage taking this method too far, but if he doesn’t want to try his asparagus before getting seconds on strawberries, he might just not be hungry. Self control when it comes to food is going to be an important lesson for our children to learn.
Rainbow Wraps: Super Healthy Kids
Present fresh and healthy vegetables in delicious and fun ways.
Sweet Birdies in a Tree: Meet the Durbiens
Whether you steam your green beans with onions or shape kiwis into palm trees, children are simply more likely to eat vegetables that are tasty, cooked well, and look appetizing.
Don a disguise.
Hide vegetables within the foods they love (i.e. a small amount of green beans blended in the tomato sauce for pasta; spinach in a strawberry mango smoothie). We only recommend this idea when offering vegetables on the plate in addition to the vegetable purees. Just think of it as added nutrients, but not the only way they should be consuming vegetables.
Mardi Gras Smoothie: The Family Kitchen
I hope to work my way up to this! Right now, we’re dealing with major aversion to any unfamiliar smell, texture, taste, and color. One of our girls in particular seems very sensitive to texture. They smell everything before eating it and if they don’t like the smell, forget even trying it. I’m seeing little bits of progress each week but not much in the vegetable department. Sigh..
Samuel was like that! It took a few weeks and he started eating everything. The first couple of days he would only eat Ethiopian food or pieces of meat. Oh also, they probably have a protein deficiency (potentially…I’ve heard it is common..Samuel had one)…that plus the parasites made for some interesting weeks of eating.
Samuel smelled everything before eating it, too. Have you tried slow cooker doro way? I might hit the spot while they are adjusting.
Yes, I’ve pulled out my Ethiopian cookbooks and have made the split pea stew, lamb stew, ground beef with berbere, chicken with berbere — they like it all. (I don’t have a slow cooker anymore.) They also love a lot of Indian dishes. But today they decided they didn’t want the split peas (after freaking for it a couple days ago) and now they seem to love pizza — as long as there are no noticeable veggies or much cheese on it. A bit crazy. We are getting them tested for parasites. And they LOVE meat… they actually woke up one morning a few week ago chanting for meat in Tigrinya! It was pretty hilarious.