My little girl was such a good little eater when she was first starting solids. She would eat all the yummy homemade veggies Mommy would prepare for her without a complaint. Sweet potatoes, avocados, and squash were some of her favorites (and still are for that matter!). Now, however, she has grown a little picky! Is it possible to get children to enjoy salad? Can we get them to happily partake of some steamed vegetables?
I am joining with Laura’s challenge today to share on how to encourage our families to eat more fruits and vegetables. For all the superior nutrition that they contain, they surely need to be increased in everyone’s diet! You can’t get too much!
Green Smoothies
Green Smoothies have been the number 1 way that we have significantly increased our enjoyment of fresh fruits and veggies. You can throw practically anything in this combo. Lately, we have been tossing in some zuchini and avocado with our favorite fruits of strawberries and bananas. With a dash of honey or stevia, we are ready to go! Even leftover salads that need to be used can be tossed in and easily covered up. I cannot encourage you more to get into the habit of preparing green smoothies, as they are packed full of nutrition. You can eat a whole plate of salad in one glass without a single complaint from the littles. Add a bit of coconut oil for some added benefits.
For the summer heat, make green smoothie popsicles (check out the BPA free popsicle molds)! As Karis is not a fan of meat, I will sometimes prepare her a green smoothie with all the salad fixings that her dad and I had for dinner. She takes this easily! Read more about green smoothies here.
Here are a few green smoothie popsicle recipes for your enjoyment:
Electric Green Popsicles
Cinna-Spinach Man
Sneaking Veggies into Your Favorite Dishes
I recently came across copies of both Deceptively Delicious & The Sneaky Chef. These are two books that promote the idea of adding vegetable purees into various meals to increase the nutrition content. In Deceptively Delicious, author Jessica Seinfeld uses cauliflower and carrot in the majority of her recipes as the flavors are easy to cover up. The book includes lots of recipes with various purees, everything from cauliflower in your deviled eggs to spinach in your brownies. Some are rather strange, but the concept definitely got me thinking. How could I adjust my main dishes to include more veggies? Here are some of the ideas I came up with to help start thinking outside the box. Generally she used no more than 1/2 cup of pureed veggies in each of her recipes, which is rather miniscule. You can definitely increase this to your taste. Basically, her method is to steam your vegetables lightly, blend till pureed and freeze in small quantities (in small ziplocs or ice cubes), and then thaw and use as needed.
Salmon/Tuna Melts (a favorite combination at our house of canned wild salmon, mayonaise, paprika and salt and pepper on a slice of bread topped with cheese and toasted in the oven) – add cauliflower purée to the mix
Deviled Eggs - add cauliflower or carrot
Macaroni & Cheese – add squash or cauliflower
Spaghetti Sauce & Chili – add carrots (I found I can easily add a bunch of carrots for all my tomato based dinners)
Oatmeal – add sweet potato
Green eggs - add spinach and/or cauliflower to your scrambled eggs
Mashed potatoes or baked potatoes - add cauliflower
So far so good! Obviously this will not increase your veggie intake significantly, nor should they replace your sides of veggies and fruits at each meal, but every little bit helps! It helped me to start thinking outside the box!
Here is one last tip:
Cut up that salad!
It is so much easier for the little people to enjoy salad if it there are not huge pieces of lettuce to consume. Cut it up into tiny bit size pieces. Top with a sweeter dressing for more enjoyment! Our favorite is Creamy Lemon Poppyseed Dressing. We serve alot of salads with raisins, apples or pears to make it more tasty.
What veggies can you add to sone of your favorite meals? What tips and tricks do you have to share about increasing your veggie & fruit intake? I would love to hear your ideas, especially for use with little ones!
What a fantastic idea to use leftover salad in a smoothie! I often add the individual salad ingredients, but it had never occurred to me that I could use up salad leftovers this way.
I have heard that coconut oil in a smoothie can tend to just leave solid chunks, since it’s solid at cold temperatures. Have you ever had difficulty with this?
I have had occasional trouble with coconut oil, but if it is soft it is normally not a problem. If completely solid, I melt it in a small saucepan on the stove before adding to the smoothie.
Also adding it in before any ice or cold ingredients will help.
I too have been putting tons of spinach in all of my smoothies. It’s amazing how the taste is completely disguised! I also have a quick and easy muffin recipe using pumpkin puree. The girls love it. It’s just a box of chocolate, white, or yellow cake mix mixed with a can of pumpkin puree. It makes 12. Bake as usual. I sprinkle a bit of cinnamon sugar on top before I bake them. I’m sure you could come up with a more natural and healthy version. : )
I have also heard that it may take up to 15+ times of trying a food to like it, because taste is simply acquired. So just keep offering it and require that they take at least one bite. We’ve even resorted to bribery on occasion, especially in restaurants, by offering a quarter for taking a bite of a new food. It usually works and most of the time, they will admit that it wasn’t bad. They don’t always fall in love at first bite. It’s amazing the differences in children, even within the same family. My oldest just began to eat and love salads and other vegetables within the past couple of years (maturity factor). My 10yo is very picky, but it fits with his temperament. My 5yo definitely eats more produce than my first two sons did at his age, but has developed some finicky-ness. My 2yo eats everything I give him, even salad. Much of the reason for the changes in my boys’ eating habits have to do with the changes I made about 5 years ago to healthier eating. So set an example and eat what you want your children to eat. They also will copy your attitudes about food, so even if you don’t like something, act like a grown-up and don’t use words like “eww, that’s gross”.
my toddler likes frozen peas and corn right out of the bag, not cooked or defrosted. Sometimes he’ll eat a whole pile!
All of my children have gone through a picky stage. We just served things that we knew they liked, and included something at each meal that we made them try. After several ‘tastings’ they eventually come to like it. My youngest would NOT eat salad, and now she loves green leaf lettuce and raw veggies with my homemade ranch dressing. I’ve been trying to get her to drink kefir for over a year, and today I blended it with berries, bananas and sweetener and called it a ‘strawberry milkshake’. She drank it all and asked for more! The other two just eat whatever is on their plate now.
I am in the same boat! My 4-y-old son used to eat EVERYthing but has grown more “selective”. We’ve found that not pushing too hard is important, and DIPS go a long way! It’s almost psychological with him – a teensy bit of HM Italian dressing on some broccoli, and it goes right down. Sweet potato fries with ketchup. Ranch dressing for raw veggies. I also make cubes of veggies and put them in most tomato sauce dishes and casseroles, plus spinach in our scrambled eggs.
I read both books and it was the idea I liked, not their actual recipes. I simply add the purees to my own recipes. Our favorites so far:
carrot in bean with bacon soup, butternut squash in mac and cheese, and BEETS in our chocolate cake! Mmmmm. Everyone loves it and I use at least a cup of veggies for each.
We too continue to offer veggies on the plate, and require 1 bite of each item before seconds are served. We make sure to serve less that we think a child will eat at a meal, and often we are surprised by how muxh or little they eat that day.
When she was a toddler, my now 6 year old used to eat every single veggie we put in front of her – as DESSERT. Cherry tomatoes and carrots were a bribe. *grin* Thanks for a great post. I would rather give my family nutritional goodness in its natural state rather than relying on vitamins and supplements.
One thing i have noticed after living out of the States for a few years now is that for most Americans vegetables are served plain (or maybe with a pat of butter) and as a side dish. In france (and Europe) I have discovered tons of really tasty dishes to which vegetables are CENTRAL. And even when covered with cream or eggs, are still not as calorie-rich as a traditional casserole. Think along the lines of vegetable quiches, soufflés, vegetable “cakes” (like zuchini bread, only salty instead of sweet), stuffed veggies, breaded and fried zucchini/ eggplant. And there are limitless vegetable soup recipes (pureed, with a dollup of sour cream added). Also many salads are done with 1 single vegetable. Tomatoes and feta. Cucumber and yogurt, shredded carrots with a little lemon juice/oil….my kids love/eat these veggies a lot better than a plain lettuce salad. Just a couple of ideas…because even for me, they make veggies a lot more appealing (though require a little more work) but i also feel better when meals are vegetable “based” because even grain based seems to overwhelm my system/ weigh me down sometimes.
My favorite way to get kiddos to eat more veggies?
Dip it in ranch! For my 23-month-old, everything tastes good dipped in ranch!
I usually make my own ranch, and the recipe I use is better than anything store bought… even my husband thinks so!
By the way, I’d love for you to participate in a blog “carnival” that a friend of mine and I are doing… it’s all about recipes to fight the summer heat.
http://everyurlwastaken.blogspot.com/2009/06/fight-heat-friday-no-bake-cookies.html
Hi Lindsay, Great ideas!
I agree with Jamie my parents were the same way most of the time… See I’m the youngest so sometimes if I threw a fit big enough or sat at the table until everyone left and threw away whatever it was on my plate I didn’t like.(I was eventually discovered by my siblings on that because they did the same thing when they were little my mom told me that one time she saw my older brother’s plate empty of lima beans something that he hated then she started to cear the dishes and when she picked up his plate she found lima beans underneath it LOL) But when I turned a certain age my parents had had enough and started forcing me to eat a small serving of whatever it was I didn’t like (brocolli, spaghetti, kale…) Eventually I learned to like just about everything I didn’t like before some of them are now my favorite foods! But my point is if you just sneak purees into their food your kids are never going to learn and the day will come that they are at their friend’s house and something will be served that they don’t like what’s going to happen then? But that’s just my opinion. Please don’t take this as me trying to criticize your parenting or anything.
I loved The Sneaky Chef cookbook for a season, and although I don’t cook out of it anymore, I still use many of the ‘hiding techniques’ I found there. I try to sneak veggies in a any dish where they won’t be noticed too much.
I add chopped carrots and frozen (cooked) spinach to spaghetti sauce and serve over pasta. I throw in a chopped head of broccoli in the boiling water the last 5 minutes when I’m making the pasta for mac-n-cheese. I make homemade personal pizzas and “hide” spinach under the mozzarella cheese. We have plenty of veggies the plain-in-sight way, but sneaking them in just adds an extra boost to our diets.
Also, I serve fruit with every meal, as dessert. My boys LOVE fruit and it’s the bribe I use to get them to eat everything else on their plate. While they’re begging for strawberries I just have to say “You can have strawberries when you eat 3 more bites of broccoli” and it works!
I second the above commenter’s advice about continuing to serve foods even though you know your toddler doesn’t like them. My 2.5 year old used to hate avocado, but I would diligently keep serving it to him. One day he tried it and liked it, now he can eat a whole avocado on his own!
PS-forgot to mention something else I’ve learned along the way. When I worked at a daycare, they had this AMAZING cook who used a “community” based way of feeding the kids. There were 3-4 items per table. Main Course, Fruit, Veggie, Fruit–each in different bowls and the kids were nOT allowed to eat until EVERYONE had been served (2&3 year olds learning manners–itw as a beautiful thing!) BUT she also had a rule:
Every person has to tak ea bit of everything on their plate, and each person is to take 2 bites of the item they don’t care for. The first is a “try it” bite, the second is a “thank-you” bite. After that, if they still don’t like it, they don’t have to eat it, but this worked and it is how we now do it around our family table!!
Sarah M
We use the “hide it” method for my two year old. She doesn’t care much for green beans or broccoli and she loves to be fed instead of feeding herself. What I do is when I prepare a bite on the fork I place a small piece of veggie on first then cover it up with mashed potatoes or other food she really likes. She eats the entire bit with no fuss and it always helps her eat her veggies!
I have this cookbook, and tried several recipes. My kids did not like the dinner recipes. So, now I use it as a resource to figure out wich veggies can be pureed and added/matched to other foods. The all time favorite is sweet potatoe puree muffins. I use Lindsay’s muffin (or any muffin) recipe, add enough puree (instead of fruit), and make mini muffins. They love it! Pureed cauliflower is easy to add to scrambled eggs and mac & cheese, and pureed carrots to meatloaf and tomatoe sauce. My kids do eat their veggies, but it’s nice to have a little extra.
After reading The China Study, we are minimizing all our animal-based products (which isn’t necessarily hard for us–we only eat meat about once a week, but milk, cheese, and eggs will be hard) and are already feeling good. We eat tons of fresh fruits/veggies daily, but the way we got our little guy turned onto salad is by, cutting it up smaller, but putting a dab of dressing on the side to “dip it”. That way it isn’t super messy and he LOVES to dip any foods!
We also own the J.Seinfeld book and have worked tons of her recipies, however, we NEVER or RARELY follow her exact directions, we even just choose any puree we have in the freezer and put it in w.o thinking twice about it! We have had some awesome reactions to it, as well, like squash or pumpkin in her banana bread (people didn’t know until they asked!).
Love that book! We also do “appetizers” as fruits/veggies if they are “STARVVVVING” and can’t wait the 15 more minutes til’ dinner! !:)
Sarah M
If you’re trying to eat healthfully, the MacDougall cookbook is totally healthy and yet I’ve found all of the recipes I’ve tried in there to be delicious.
I borrowed the sneaky chef book from my mom…I don’t really use the recipes, but I love the concept. The biggest hit has been spaghetti sauce. My daughter loves spaghetti with sauce and will not eat veggies, so I throw veggies into the sauce just to get some in her! I puree all kinds of veggies and put a mix in. In fact, I never have spaghetti sauce for our family any more without putting in at least 1/2c pureed spinach and no one notices. It does change the color a bit. Squash, sweet potatoes, beans, peas all work well too! A great way to get her and us all to have more veggies!
I have 4 boys and two are tweens…I have to add one piece of advice. I read this somewhere many years ago and I now know from experience how true it is. Just because your kid turns away from something doesn’t mean you should stop putting it on their plate. It takes a toddler an average of seeing a food 20 times before they will eat it! So always put even a tiny amount on their plate. Eventually they will try it. We use the rule …”Take it like medicine” When they are a little older. So I tell my kids to keep trying it least one bite of everything. Even if it something they dont like…I tell’m to take it like a teaspoon of medicine. You would be surprised at how many times I have seen my kids go from disliking something to loving it. My teens both love many green foods…like spinach, broccoli, assparagus…Many people are awed at what they eat.
So always put it on their plate and let them “see” the food many times. Trust me on this!
This is great advice. I have 3 children – 12, 3, and 1. All are terrific eaters. I just make their plates (well, the 12-year-old serves herself) with whatever we’re eating, cut down to appropriate sizes per age, and the requirement in our home is that you must taste it. My 1-year-old will eat anything, my 3-year-old goes through waves of finickiness but eventually comes back around. My 12-year-old has a beautifully developed palate and gets offended at the lack of offering on most children’s menus.
I don’t have kids yet…just a husband who doesn’t like fruits and veggies. I’m not sure if this makes it more difficult than trying to hide it from kids because he’ll know what I did every time. Because I can’t really hide anything I’m trying to gradually build the variety and frequency of our fruit/veggie intake.
I started with broccoli and put it in recipes that had a strong flavor already. I have an orange chicken stir fry recipe that doesn’t call for veggies but it has such a strong orange and garlic flavor that you can’t even taste the broccoli. Gradually I have increased the amount of broccoli I use in it. My next step will be to add a little bit of another kind of veggie to it too. I think the BIGGEST tip is to make sure that the sauce (or whatever covers the taste of the veggie) is doubled or increased enough to cover the added veggies. Too little sauce and it will just taste like what they’re trying to avoid.
Similarly to Michelle, I’m weary of the Deceptively Delicious Cookbook’s claims. Adding 1/2 cup of cauliflower puree to an entire meal of mac and cheese (6 to 8 servings) will only give each eater a tablespoon of cauliflower. While it is definitely SOMETHING and therefore more than NOTHING, I fear moms thinking that a dinner with some hidden puree is sufficient. I think it should be used only to supplement other efforts to bring veggies to our tables.
Another great idea is a CSA (community shared agriculture) share that will bring a wide variety of exciting veggies into your house fresh from a local farm! Some of these veggies might look funny to little ones (kalirabi), but many are familiar (tomatoes, lettuce). I think the best aspect for little ones is that the farms often invite crop sharers to come and see their farm! What a wonderful way to teach little ones about where their food comes from and how yummy and interesting it is!
We found our local CSA through http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
Bon Appetit!
I do heartily agree that adding 1/2 cup of veggies does not equate to a significant increase per serving, but every little bit helps! It definitely should not be substituted for other veggie sides served at each meal, but simply increasing the quality and quantity at each meal. I like the concept more than any of the recipes. Just starting to make all my tomato based meals with more carrots and other veggies is simple and boosts those nutrients. The 1/2 cup was just a guideline anyway , as I often use more than 1 c in my spaghetti sauce or chili, for example. This was more just encouragement to think outside the box.
We have a very simple method of getting the kids (ages 7, 7, 5, 2) to eat what’s good for them: I serve a balanced, nutritious meal (usually consisting of mostly vegetables, some meat and/or dairy, and some whole grains), and if they don’t eat what they’re served, they go hungry (until the next meal, where they’re offered the same thing). I have been called a “mean mom”, but as a Dr once told my mom, “Put a balanced meal in front of them, and they won’t let themselves starve.”
And my kids? Yeah, they’re the ones in the grocery store you hear loudly begging for “brussel sprouts this week, mom”, or they’re filling the produce bag to over-flowing with broccoli, or dancing in celebration when I pick up an eggplant. With results like those, I don’t mind being called a mean mom. I just smile.
I’m with you Jamie! It’s amazing what they’ll eat when they’re hungry! : )
The biggest thing that has helped my kids is that I will serve them a salad or fresh cut veggies while I am finishing up cooking supper. They are hungry at that point, want to be in the kitchen with me, and feel special getting to eat before mom and dad.
Having these cut up veggies handy for snacks with some hummus or other healthy dip is a good idea for when the kids really want something now (instead of crackers or even fruit if you trying to replace some fruit with veggies.)
Also, trying to get a veggie for breakfast is good seeing as it is traditionally not a staple at breakfasts any more. Good things we like to mix in with eggs: cooked spinach, tomatoes, onions, asparagus, and lots of fresh herbs. If we happen to do a soup for breakfast (Vietnamese Pho is a favorite) it is easy to add some greens to your soup. Pho is especially nice as your fresh herbs added to what is already in the soup are added fresh at the table, fun for little fingers to tear up and add in on their own.
As usual, wonderful and informative post. I’d like to try the green smoothies.
My only comment is to skip purees entirely (as baby food). When I was researching how to make my own baby food, I found an article about baby-led weaning. No purees, just real food!
You simply give them whole steamed veggies (and then fruit and then whatever else!) sometime after six months. Then you do nothing else. Let them pick it up and nibble it. Some babies will devour an entire piece of broccoli on day 1. Others enjoy the taste and texture for months before actually eating.
My daughter was content with breast milk until 11 months but did occasionally eat broccoli pieces or peas or whatever steamed veggie we were eating. But this was not adding a ton of calories to her diet. At 11 months, however, she started eating everything in sight.
She’s a terrific eater and is not picky at all. She loves her fruits and veggies….and meat! This surprises me as I was a vegetarian for 11 years. I can’t believe how much she likes all kinds of meat!
She’s almost two and is still breastfeeding. I’ll let you know if she becomes picky any time in the future! I have heard it’s quite normal as a phase!
I think figuring out how to fit additional veggies into our eating habits is great. However, after reading your amounts added in this posting and in the green smoothies (which I made and taste great!), I wanted to gently point out the math. One needs to make sure and divide the total veggies added to a dish by the number of servings made from the dish and count that way. If a recipe of smoothies has an apple (usually 2 fruit servings) plus a big handful of spinach (one serving veggies), and two cups of melon (four servings fruit), you have a total of six fruits and one veggie. Divide that by four, hypothetically, and each person gets one and a half fruits and one quarter serving of veggies.
Again, I don’t mean to be overly picky. I just am one of those people who keeps a diary of my food intake on a daily basis and I key into these things.
Thank you for your wonderful site, you do give me lots of information that I appreciate. In fact, I have been incorporating coconut oil into my diet now thanks to you!
- Michelle
I use the Deceptively Delicious cookbook a lot since both my husband and daughter don’t eat many veggies & fruit. I alway put squash and carrots into any tomato based meal (i.e. goulosh, spagetti, lagsana). I have found that I am more likely to add the “extra’s” if I have them ready to go at mealtime. I spend 1 night a month fixing my purees and freezing them in small portions. I take my ziplock bag out of the freezer and it thaws as I am starting dinner. To add I just snip the corner off and squeeze into my sauce. I also make sure to prepare my produce when I bring it home (if possible) so I can grap and go.
I’ve been working on this at my house too. You have great ideas. I’m definitely going to try the green smoothies. We also really enjoy “green rice”-I add spinach (fresh or frozen) during the last 10 minutes of cooking my rice. My picky hubby loves it. Bless you!!
Would you please share your salmon/tuna recipe?
My husband would love that!
Great post…I too am trying to get more veggies in the kids!
Thanks
Jessica
Yay! Good post. I have had a lot of success with the green smoothies. My girls drink them right up. I have Deceptively Delicious, but I always forget about that cookbook. I do want to try her recipe for breaded, baked chicken nuggets.
When my youngest was smaller, she was on a mashed-potato kick. I found that I could put nearly anything in her mashed potatoes – including little bits of chicken, or peas or even spinach – and she’d eat it all.
I did not enjoy that cookbook at all, my husband and daughter spit out the food.
Kids get finicky, just change up the fruits and veggies you are giving them. One day my daughter woke up and didn’t like potatoes anymore so I just found another veggie she liked. She stopped liking bananas so I replaced them with mangos, now she is back to liking the bananas and potatoes and still likes the things I substituted.