How to Get Kids to Eat More Veggies!

Have you ever gotten a great deal at the farmers’ market or grocery store, or grown some veggies yourself and then been disappointed that no one in your family would even try it? It can be hard to introduce healthier foods and kids tend to follow their own rules when it comes to food.  How can you get your kids to try food that you know is good for them and stop the endless mealtime battles? Try my top seven tips for how to get kids to eat more veggies.

Getting Past the “At Least try it” Phase

My kids each have their own likes and dislikes when it comes to food.  One is all about taste and anything bitter, sour, or even the least bit tangy gets a thumbs down.  Another of my kids cares more about texture, mushy or mealy things are snubbed, no matter how tasty.  One big hurdle is getting them to try something new.  They’ve already made up their minds that they hate it – even if it’s never even been in our house before.  But, there are some easy ways to get even the pickiest kid to eat more veggies. 

Seven Tips to Get Kids to Eat More Veggies:

1. Switch from the “single side” to a “choose your own adventure”.  Rather than making a large serving of one vegetable, you could offer smaller amounts of several different vegetables.  Then let your kids pick what they like.  Even if they tend to stick to their favorites, just having other options can increase their likelihood of trying something new.  Especially if they see others at the meal trying different options. My kids also like to make mixtures of veggies to try different colors or textures. They don’t always look appetizing to me, but if they are eating the veggies, I count it as a win.
   
   
2. Swap out the “salad bowl and dressing” for the “appetizer plate and dip”.  Anything you can put in a salad you could serve as a dipping option, even greens. My kids love the opportunity to dip their veggies in ranch, hummus, mayonnaise, or even ketchup, whatever “dip” they like. They will often times eat more veggies and dip than something chopped up in a salad bowl.  Especially if I put them out while I’m still finishing up the rest of the meal. Plus, my kids love eating with their fingers, so it’s fun for them and ups the healthy level of the meal.
   
   
3. Go from the “usual suspects” to “weird veggies”.  Even if your kids don’t like trying new things, it’s hard to resist trying some of the funny names, shapes, and colors that certain (especially home-grown) vegetables have.  My kids love when veggies get “weird” and split or have unusual shapes.  They fight over the opportunity to eat the “pants carrot” or the lumpy “snowman” potato or tomato.  There are also lots of different color options for some vegetables.  Tomatoes can come in red, orange, yellow, green, purple, black, and white, plus swirls and combinations of each color.  Each variety is still ripe, tasty, and full of nutrition. Carrots, radishes, beans, peas, potatoes, and squash also have a rainbow of varieties. You could hold a blindfolded taste test to see if your kids can tell the difference.  Also some veggie varieties have kid-friendly names like “Dragon Tongue” bean (a white bean with purple swirls all over it).  Or “Dinosaur Kale” (a variety with bumpy leaves that were thought to resemble dinosaur skin – I guess that was before we found out they might have had feathers!). Offering some weird veggies can keep things interesting and get kids to eat more veggies.
   
   
4. Change from “normal size” veggies to “silly sizes”.  One of the benefits of growing food or buying from a farmers’ market can be that you aren’t limited to the size and shape of veggies that are sold in the grocery store.  My kids can’t resist picking and eating the “Largest Spinach Leaf in the World”, or the “Smallest Cherry Tomato Ever” from our garden.  Sometimes they even sort their food by size before eating it. But, even when we buy produce from a store, there is still usually some interesting size variation if you help them look for it.
   
   
5. Get rid of “boring” recipes and find “fantastic” recipe names.  What kid wants to eat “Corn and Bean Salad” when you could be eating “Pirate’s Treasure”?  We make a salad where each color of vegetable represents a different “treasure” – corn (gold); tomatillos, green pepper or peas (emeralds); tomatoes or red pepper (rubies); white beans or onion (diamonds); black beans (obsidian).  The recipe changes based on what we have in the garden or the freezer.  The kids enjoy picking what will be each type of treasure and are eager to add more variety to be able to get more kinds of treasure.
   
   
6. Let them choose their “signature” dishes.  One of my middle children decided they didn’t like lettuce, but would only eat spinach like Popeye.  Then my youngest had to have only kale to be equally special, but different.  Either green has more nutrition than many standard lettuces, so we let them have their “signature salads”.  My oldest enjoys drizzling on several different salad dressings to get their special “mix of the day”. As long as they don’t use too much, it’s worth it if they eat the salad underneath. 
   
   
7. Go all out on “amazing toppings”.  When you think about toppings for salads or veggie dishes, there are tons of options that kids can choose from.  Not just your typical cheese, croutons, bread crumbs, or bacon bits.  In our house we regularly have sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, peppers or beets, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, herbs or spices, different kinds of cheese, even raisins or dried cranberries.  They can switch up the flavor profile, add nutrition and encourage eating more of whatever is underneath.

Every kid approaches food in their own way, so these tricks to make your veggies more kid-friendly won’t all necessarily work for your picky eater.  But, they’ve been “kid-tested, mom approved” in our house for years.  Try a few and see how you can get your kids to eat more veggies at every meal!

Want to learn how to grow some of these veggies yourself? Grab my FREE Super Seedlings guide and get started today.

Want to save money on your grocery bill? Check out 10 Best Plants to Grow for Your Budget for some tips on how to grow food that will improve your family’s bottom line.