Nutrition
Introducing Young Children to New Foods
A parent’s nightmare, trying to get the children to eat the Brussels sprouts or the peas you’ve put on their plate. Most of the time you will notice the child wrinkles their nose in disgust and carefully eats around the healthier food options.
While most parents turn to a desperate attempt with bribery, there are easier ways to encourage your child to eat a healthy diet. With obesity being such a big problem in our current society, eating a healthy diet from a young age is essential.
Cook Together
Children love to help out in the kitchen from an early age, so when preparing dinner for the family get the children to help. They can help with preparing the vegetables, pulling the leaves off the corn, or getting the carrots out of the fridge. Including them in the cooking process can help when it comes to actually eat the foods they don’t enjoy. If they feel they were a part of it, they are more likely to try it to see how their food turned out.
Introduce One New Food at a Time
Filling a plate with foods your child doesn’t eat is not the way to get them to eat healthy foods. Start by ensuring everyone has the same meal at the table and that there is food on the plate your child really enjoys. The next step is to introduce one new food, don’t make it a large portion. A small portion is more than enough; the aim is to encourage them to eat it. Once they are eating the new food you can introduce another one.
Snacks should be offered to your child throughout the day, but keep them healthy from carrot sticks to fruit. Getting them used to eat healthy snacks will become a habit in their later years, this will also encourage them to eat healthy meals at the dinner table and reduce the risk of obesity when they get older.
Super Powers
Telling a little boy that if he drinks milk he will get hair on his chest like dad is certainly one way of making your child try new things. More creative parents will invent superpowers; from turning into a giant if they eat their peas to being super strong when they’re older if they eat spinach – just like Popeye.
Bribery
In some cases, nothing works and your child will just turn their nose up at any healthy foods on their plate. This is the time for bribery. Always ensure you leave plenty of time for eating at the dinner table and make it a sociable event with the entire family. Offering a dessert if the healthy foods are eaten is often just enough encouragement for a child to try something new.
In some cases when they see the whole family eating the vegetables on their plates at the dinner table they are likely to try some of them. When all else fails a small surprise offered if they eat their veg can go a long way when trying to introduce younger children to the healthy foods on their plates.
