Encouraging kids to make healthy choices — food or otherwise — is a constant battle as a parent. It’s worth fighting for though because those healthy habits are likely to carry over into adulthood.

Healthy eating doesn’t have to be a challenge. It can be fun. My kids are adventurous eaters but they weren’t always that way. We went through several rough patches where one of them would eat only macaroni and cheese while another couldn’t have any two foods mixed together.

A conversation on our Facebook page about encouraging healthy eating habits got me thinking about what tricks we’ve tried over the years to help our kids develop healthy eating habits.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to encourage healthy eating habits:

Model  Healthy Eating

Kids are smart. They are not going to eat something that you tell them is good for them if they see you scarfing down junk when you think they aren’t looking. If we want our kids to eat healthy foods we have to eat them to. Our kids have to see that healthy habits are important to us.

Kids often want to mimic their parents. This can work against us if we aren’t making healthy choices. On the flip side, I’ve used this to my advantage too. Want to know the quickest way to get a kid to want to try a strange new food? Stand in the kitchen eating it and don’t offer it to them. You won’t believe how fast your kids will come running in asking for a bite.

“What? You want some of these fresh veggies? Well I was going to enjoy them all by myself but if you really want some I guess that’s okay.”

Works like a charm.

Take Advantage of Smoothies

Don’t underestimate the role that smoothies can play in a healthy diet. If you have kids who aren’t crazy about fruits and vegetables  or have issues with certain textures and you are worried about their nutrition, smoothies are your secret weapon.

In my case, I had a child with sensory processing issues who simply refused to eat a wide variety of foods. Smoothies were a great way to sneak all kinds of things into his diet. Actually, I wasn’t really sneaking things in. He knew what was in his smoothie. I’m not really a big fan of sneaking foods into kids diets because I have a hard time believing they are learning healthy eating habits if they don’t know what they are eating — although with some kids I’m sure there’s a time and a place for that.

We eat green smoothies every morning for breakfast and my kids love them. They’ve been great for my teething baby who isn’t eating much these days (more on that later) and for the rest of us, I know we are getting several servings of fruits and veggies as soon as we get up in the morning.

If you need a kid-friendly green smoothie idea, try our basic green smoothie recipe found here.

Get Kids Involved in the Kitchen

My oldest son went through a picky eating phase. “Did those two foods . . . touch each other?! Well they obviously must not be eaten now. Are you trying to feed me a vegetable that isn’t carrots or corn? You must not have gotten the memo that I won’t be eating that.”

It was a rough couple of years in our house, and during that time “cheese” was a food group. You’d never guess that now though. My son is an ambitious eater who is on a mission to eat every fruit and vegetable known to man. What’s changed? Well, partially that’s just a part of growing up and now that he’s older he’s feeling a bit braver. We also brought him into the kitchen and let him experiment with food on his own terms.

These days he’s more likely to cook breakfast than I am and it usually includes plenty of fruits and vegetables. My younger kids are beginning to follow in his footsteps and I’m looking forward to a stage of life where I don’t have to cook unless I want to. While it’s nice having a second set of hands in the kitchen, my son has been willing to try foods that he would never have touched before simply because he was the one who prepared them. It’s amazing how that changes a child’s mindset.

Serve New Foods with Old Favorites

One of my favorite tricks when my kids was younger was to introduce new foods while serving an old favorite. If we were trying a new veggie, I’d serve it along with a favorite like meatloaf or roast chicken. My kids were more willing to try a few bites of something new if they saw that at least part of their dinner included something they enjoyed. If my kids didn’t like the new food the first time, I’d keep serving it . . . because I’m mean like that. And because eventually they usually came around and learned to like it. I’d serve the new food with a variety of other things so they had something to choose from but they’d have to try a bite of the new food too.

Prepare Foods in a Variety of Ways

We all have food preferences. If one of my kids didn’t like a food, I’d continue to serve it but I might change the way it was prepared. I have one child who loves eggs — he could eat them every day of the week. But if you try and give him a hard boiled egg he’ll gag. Hard boiled eggs just aren’t his thing but as long as he’s eating eggs prepared in a different way and getting those nutrients it doesn’t matter to me how he eats them.

Don’t Offer Anything Else

I know that it’s common practice for parents to offer their child an alternate meal if they don’t like what has been served. I’ve never done that for a couple of reasons.

1. I just don’t have time for that.

2. If I work hard to put dinner on the table someone had better eat it.

3. Sometimes in life we just have to do things we don’t want to do.

4. My kids won’t starve if they miss one meal.

I have to preface this by saying that there have been times when I’ve had to make exceptions to that rule when I’ve had a child with health issues (and sensory issues) and I just need to get calories in them any way I can. That’s the exception rather then the rule though. I don’t want bad food choices to become a habit and my kids won’t develop a taste for healthy foods if they don’t eat them on a regular basis so when it comes to dinner at my house, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”. 

Teach Kids the “Why”

Kids understand far more then we give them credit for. If I tell my kids, “eat this because I say so”, I’m not going to get much of a response. If I say, “eat this meat because your body needs protein to help build muscles and by the way, let’s talk about all the cool thing iron does for your body”, I can see a little lightbulb turn on in their heads.

My 7 year old has been known to refuse ice-cream because he sees that it includes high fructose corn syrup and he knows that it is not good for his body. He didn’t care when we told him apples were healthy and ice-cream was not but when you start talking about what different foods do (and don’t do) for your body, that got through to him. Now I have to sneak my ice-cream when I buy the naughty kind because he’ll yell at me.

Check out books from the library on food, nutrition, and the way your body works. Kids are fascinated by that stuff (and I’ve learned quite a few new things from children’s books too). Once they understand the reasons you are asking them to eat healthy food they are more likely to be on board.

 

How do you help encourage your kids to make healthy food choices?