Dress Up Your Kids’ Veggies!
From the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition
Research Center
Vegetables can play an important
role in helping control kids' weight gain while supplying important
nutrients they need for growth and development. But getting kids
to eat them can be a challenge.
"To get kids to eat vegetables,
they must be available when and where kids tend to eat, be very
easy-to-eat, and taste good," said Joan Carter, R.D., an
instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of
Medicine and a Cordon-Bleu trained chef.
To make vegetables more
tempting to kids, Carter offers these tips:
• Offer new vegetables
at the beginning of the meal when small children are the hungriest.
Serve vegetables in new combinations. Children tend to favor
peas, potatoes, carrots, beans and corn. Mix these vegetables
with others they are less likely to eat, such as broccoli and
cauliflower.
• Use a little fat, sugar
and salt to help make healthy foods more appealing to kids.
"Kids are born liking sweet tastes, so use this to your
advantage," Carter says. Cook carrots with a little sugar
and chicken stock; make carrot “slaw” with raisins;
top broccoli with low-fat cheese sauce; add grated vegetables
like carrots or squash to home-baked muffins.
• Prepare vegetables in
new ways. Try a stir-fry or add fresh vegetables to prepared
soups. Mix a vegetable in with a favorite food, such as peas
in macaroni and cheese or blend soft, cooked carrots into mashed
potatoes. Add vegetables to pizza toppings or sautéed
minced veggies like broccoli and red pepper and add to spaghetti
and pizza sauces, meat loaf and pureed soups. Make oven-baked
sweet potato “fries” or bake this high-fiber, vitamin-A
rich alternative to white potatoes with a touch of sugar, cinnamon
and cloves.
• Make eating veggies fun
and easy. For kids over the age of 4, make veggie “kabobs”
with cherry tomatoes and cucumber slices or “grab bags”
with baby carrots, broccoli “trees” and celery sticks
and keep near low-fat dips or salsa on a child-level shelf in
the refrigerator. Use cut-up pieces of vegetables to make a
"smiley face" on mashed potatoes. Offer an edible
spoon, such as a stalk of celery, to scoop up chili or stew.
• Enlist kids to help scour
magazines for new veggie recipes that the family could try.
Let kids use the recipe to conduct an "ingredient scavenger
hunt" at the grocery store and later assist in preparing
recipe at home.
• Become a family of farmers
market explorers who stop and ask growers about their produce,
their farms and how they cook vegetables for themselves. Grow
a family vegetable garden.
• Be a good role model.
Eat your vegetables and show you excitement about finding and
trying new ones.
And what if despite your efforts,
your children still turn up their noses at anything yellow, green
or leafy? "Don't give up," Carter says. "It may
take some time before kids try a vegetable, and it might take
a lot of tries before they begin to like it."
The best advice is to continue
to offer vegetables at each meal and encourage children to try
one bite. If they don't like it, that's fine. Allowing young kids
to stop at one bite can make trying new foods less scary, while
forcing them to eat something they truly don't like will only
make the situation worse.
© Child Nutrition Research
Center
Located in the Texas Medical Center
in Houston, Texas, the Children's Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
is a USDA/Agricultural Research Service (USDA/ARS) research facility
operated under a cooperative agreement with Baylor College of
Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital. The CNRC is one of six
USDA/ARS human nutrition research centers. Its mission is to define
the nutrient needs of healthy children from conception through
adolescence and in pregnant and nursing women. Visit them at www.kidsnutrition.org.
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