4 Ways to Instill Healthy Eating Habits in Kids
Kids are notoriously finicky, but it’s not entirely their fault. We humans are naturally inclined to dislike unfamiliar flavors. Imagine for a moment that you have to forage for food in the wild rather than at the Safeway. If you’ve eaten it before and lived to tell the tale, chances are good that it’s not poisonous. Eating some berry or mushroom you’ve never had before is considerably riskier. So, if your kids wrinkle their noses at new foods, it may just be a hold-over from the old poisonous berry days.
#1. Don’t Wait to Train Your Kids to Eat Healthy Foods
One tip is to have a house rule that kids have to try a new food on three different occasions before they decide they don’t like it. Often, as a food becomes more familiar, kids are less resistant to it. It also helps to introduce them to a wide variety of foods and flavors from an early age.
There’s no reason that small children need to eat a bland diet. Try adding a little curry powder to the tuna salad; toss some arugula in the macaroni-and-cheese; or try almond or cashew butter once in a while instead of peanut butter. Kids who learn to appreciate — or at least tolerate — a wider palette of flavors will be less put-off by a vegetable or herb with a strong or unfamiliar taste.
Now, if your kids are already older, that particular ship may have sailed. But all is not lost. There are still ways to get your kids to expand their repertoire to include, yes, even vegetables.
#2. Get Their Buy-in
Teaching kids about nutrition can make them more enthusiastic about eating healthy foods. As you’ve probably already figured out, just telling kids that sugar is bad for them doesn’t seem to hold much sway. But you can get them fired up about the fact that antioxidants neutralize “bad guy” free radicals, for example. Then, you can make a game out of guessing which vegetables have the most antioxidants.
You can find suggestions for how to teach your kids basic nutrition concepts with games and other fun activities, and find materials for improving nutrition programs in your school and community at TeamNutrition.usda.gov.
Kids are also much more likely to eat foods that they had a hand in bringing to the table. If your child is with you when you do the grocery shopping, let him or her pick out some fresh vegetables. Kids love farmer’s markets by the way — which also eliminates those arguments in the cereal and candy aisles. You know the ones I mean.
Most kids also enjoy cooking and are a lot more interested in eating things they made themselves. Teach your kids how to make a salad dressing from scratch and they’ll be more willing to eat their salad. (Here’s a quick video demonstration on how to make the perfect vinaigrette.) Or, let them thread vegetables onto a skewer for the grill and paint them with a marinade or some olive oil.
Perhaps the most effective way to get kids invested in a vegetable is to turn them into gardeners if possible. You want to see a kid excited about squash? Give them a corner of the vegetable garden and a packet of seeds. Beans, peas, and lettuce are particularly child-friendly because the time to harvest is relatively short. Kidsgardening.org has some great resources to help you introduce your kids to the pleasures and rewards of gardening.