Getting Children to Eat Vegetables

Video Transcript

"You've read nutrition guidelines that say your children and you should get five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. And you thinking that that's pretty difficult. My name is Beverly Bitterman ARNP, health and wellness consultant. And I'm here to tell you some tips and strategies to up your child's intake of vegetables. So one thing that we know is children like to be involved in making decisions, they like to have some control just like we adults do. So one option around vegetables is to ask them what they would like. Would they rather have carrots or broccoli? Or would they rather have peas? And get them to choose. That way they feel they got a little bit of control. Another option is to get creative with how your kids get vegetables. So for example if you're making spaghetti and your child will eat sauce and by the way sauce would be made form tomato's which would count as a vegetable, you can grate up a carrot in the sauce and sort of sneak vegetables in that way. You can sneak things especially carrots into lots of different foods and casseroles, and meat type dishes. You can also think about juices, some kids will actually eat or drink something like a V8 juice and that counts as a vegetable. Some kids will eat cold vegetables like carrots if they can dip them maybe in ranch dressing or something of that nature. And that gets another vegetable in. What you want to do is not create a big power struggle over eating vegetables. One strategy however that you can do is you can say vegetables must be eaten or there's no dessert. So you're not actually telling them they have to eat vegetables, you're just telling them that if they want to eat something sweet after a meal then they need to finish their vegetables. And you want to pick vegetables that, that they have some liking for. So in other words I wouldn't probably make my child eat a Brussels sprout but I do insist that she eats broccoli when we have broccoli. So those are just some tips and strategies about how to get your child to eat more vegetables. And I hope that they've helped. My name is Beverly Bitterman ARNP, health and wellness consult. Good luck getting your child to eat more veggies."