Tips to Encourage Your Child to Eat Their Veggies from Farm to Early Care and Education experts
October is National Farm to School Month, a time when schools, early care and education programs, farms, communities, and organizations celebrate food education, gardens and locally grown foods. Research indicates that children who participate in Farm to ECE programs are more likely to try and like new foods, including vegetables and fruits.
Odds are, you want your child to eat more veggies at home too.
Thanks to Quality Care for Children (QCC), a leader in Georgia’s Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE) movement and the source that our child care providers trust most on this topic, we have suggestions on how families can bring the benefits of Farm to ECE into your home.
First, and most importantly, know that you and your children have different jobs to do at mealtime. Your job is to provide healthy foods in a positive mealtime environment. Their job is to decide whether and how much to eat from what’s on the table.
nine tips to help children eat their vegetables because they want to:
Serve veggies early and often. The younger children are when they are exposed to vegetables, the earlier they will grow to like them. Once your child is ready for solids, make vegetables a regular part of meals and snacks.
Remove the pressure. Eliminate “no thank you bites.” Making them try something they don’t want to eat often backfires and teaches them that they do not have control over their eating.
Serve new foods alongside favorite foods. New foods appear safer when paired with more familiar foods. For instance, try our Easy Spinach Pesto recipe paired with their favorite pasta.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Some children may need to see a food 15-20 times before trying it. Continue serving previously refused foods every few weeks.
Mix it up. Are you always steaming your family’s veggies? Try roasting them with different seasonings or offer veggies raw or with dip. Many preschoolers like the crunch of raw vegetables.
Let them help. Young children love to be helpers. They can help prepare foods by washing vegetables, tearing lettuce and greens, assembling sandwiches and wraps, or arranging sliced veggies on top of a bagel or pizza.
Show it or grow it. There’s not time better than Farm to School Month to show your child what the vegetable looked like before it was prepared and talk about how it grows. If you have the time, you can plan a farm visit, apple picking, or just let your child tag along the next time you visit a farm stand or head to your local grocer for fresh produce. Better yet, plant a garden and let them grow it themselves! Books are another wonderful way to expose your child to new vegetables.
Be a role model. Sit down and eat the same things you want your kids to enjoy. Family meals are important for children’s physical and social-emotional well-being.
Provide a pleasant mealtime environment. Think about what you like when you are enjoying a meal with family or friends. Put away the screens, play soft music, and engage in pleasant conversation.
Last, but not least, relax. Kids get nutrition over days and weeks, not individual meals. Sometimes they’ll eat all their veggies, sometimes a bite, sometimes none. Following these tips will help them grow into healthy eaters.
If you want additional activities, recipes and book suggestions to help your child learn more about and eat in-season, fresh veggies and fruits, visit QCC’s Farm to ECE page. Be sure to check out and download the Harvest of the Month Calendar and monthly resources, such as the Parent Newsletter, which are available in English and Spanish.
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