BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Cooking For Kids How to Get Kids to Eat Healthy

This may be obvious to some, but a good way to get your kids to eat healthy is by involving them in the process of making the food.

Let them pick out the produce at the grocery store.
Let them help with the preparations in putting the meal together.

Being involved has definitely helped my son not be so picky.

Anyone else have any luck with this technique?

Oh definitely!

We go once a month to the Farmer's Market near us, they have an amazing selection of fruits and vegetables. Some things I don't even recognize, LOL!

But when we go I always let the kids pick out something new they want to try. If they pick it out, then they will amost always eat it. They may not ever get it again, but they like being in charge of what they eat.

On the other hand, I now have fresh food snobs. I can't serve canned fruits or vegetables in my house - they won't eat them!

Hi NaturalHealthNut! Welcome to the Cooking for Kids forum!

Thank you for your post, and I couldn�t agree more.

Michelle, I�m laughing so hard at your term: fresh food snobs!

That�s such a great habit that you have your kids eating fresh fruits and vegetables (and truthfully, one that I need to do more of).

I also think having a �Kids Cook� night once in a while can be a wonderful experience. Let the kids pick out a special recipe form a cookbook or website, and let them help prepare it.

This is also a nice way to get older kids in the kitchen that otherwise would rather be texting their friends, lol!

A good friend said that when her teenage daughter is asked to be in charge of dinner, her confidence level increases tremendously. It started off with her daughter being too scared to try anything at first, but with some help and guidance, her daughter now regularly asks to pick a recipe and cook something special for the family.

Thank you for starting this great topic!

You're in Lake Lanier, Michelle? You probably go somewhere else, but I remember the Dekalb Farmer's Market in Atlanta from years ago. Boy, do I miss that! Never seen the like before or since. It was so cheap and easy to buy the most exotic vegetables and spices...

About veggies and healthy foods--I'm remembering my childhood. I hated green veggies when I was a kid--I used to pick all the vegetables except the water chestnuts out of Chinese food! But I love veggies now.

I'm betting that even if the kids scorn the healthy stuff now, there's still time to develop a love affair with healthy foods. If they eat greens and whole grains and such even a little bit, the taste will get to be familiar. Then later in life, they'll get nostalgic and think, hmmm, let's try 'em again. Maybe they're not so bad. It happened to me with spinach--and Bob Dylan.

I used to live right by that DeKalb Farmer's Market - probably one of the things I miss the most about leaving Atlanta!

My brother is a chef in Atlanta, so he does go to the Dekalb Farmer's Market quite often.

I go to Harry's Farmer's Market in Duluth (well, they changed names - it's now called Whole Foods).

My mom is a caterer, and my brother followed in her footsteps, I love to cook for fun. So our kids are actually quite adventurous when it comes to food. We roll our own sushi, and even the 5 yr old begs for it at least once a week. They don't get it that often, because it is too expensive, but they ask for it!

And all 3 are interested in cooking. The 17 yr old actually works with my Mom, and experiments with cooking. Unfortunately every recipe he makes has to have some kind of pepper in it, so he is the only one who will eat it. The boy has an asbestos tongue.

I take my kids shopping with me and they even help me clip coupons and keep track of them. Kind of a game.

I belong to an organic food coop and they help me unpack the food and put it away too. My parents have chickens and grow a big garden so we spend time there so the kids know where food comes from.

I have them help in the kitchen as much as they can at their age. Another thing I do is limit the kid TV, which advertises a lot of unhealthy food choices!

I agree with nerdwritermom. I used to hate stuff like asparagus when I was a child, but now I love it. However, I know people my age who still wouldn't touch asparagus...or many other vegetables for that matter, just because they never had to eat it when they were kids.

I truly believe that sometimes kids are stubborn about eating certain things because it's considered "nerdy" or certain foods have a bad reputation at school. In elementary school, our principal would threaten to serve us broccoli flavored milk instead of chocolate milk (although I thought broccoli milk would be cool to try). The kids who ate tuna fish sandwiches were always made fun of. I remember a girl in COLLEGE who was trying to make fun of me for bringing a tuna fish label to our nutrition class...

Also, when everyone else is eating pizza and fries with ranch dressing, kids feel left out. Waiting in line for pizza gives kids more time to talk to each other too..

I could ramble on about this forever..

I used to make healthy food for my kids but disguise it. My daughter hated "green stuff" in her food. Like she wanted spaghetti sause to be kind of thin, with no veggies in it.

I used to blend up green peppers, onion and mushrooms fresh and then add them to spaghetti sauce from a jar.

I've added tofu to things like lasagna casserole too. When you grate it up, it looks like cheese and no one can tell. You can also grate up tofu in scrambled eggs and you don't really see them.

I knew my daughter was growing up when she was in college and started eating salad! I never thought she'd even eat a tomato but now she is.

I think it just takes time to get kids to eat healthy. Keep offering healthy choices and, maybe they won't start eating healthier while they live with you, but down the road, when they're on their own, I think they tend to eat like they were raised to eat.

I raised 2 stepdaughters who fought me every step of the way on healthy eating but now they have their own kids, they are making healthy choices for their families.

You never know what lessons are sinking in!