Getting children to eat their vegetables is one of the hardest challenges a parent faces.
Every parent wants their child to be healthy, and vegetables are definitely a healthy food.
But what happens when you're tired of the fights and the struggles and everything you've tried is not working? It's time to get sneaky! Trust that your kids will forgive you in the end.
Here are five ideas for sneaking vegetables into your kids · Prepare Food Without Them This is the first and most important part of sneaking vegetables into your kids food.
Make sure they are not around while you cook.
If they see you putting those vegetables in they may not touch that dish with a ten foot pole.
So tell them that you need some space and that cooking time is mommy or daddy time, and that they can go play or watch TV before eating.
Kids are likely to take you up on the offer of play or TV and will leave you alone.
If they don't, work as a tag team and get one parent to keep them occupied while the other one does the dirty work.
· Disguise it Well Mix the vegetables with something you know your kids are familiar with and will always like to eat.
A good example is a pasta like a vegetable lasagna.
Most kids love lasagna because of the tomato sauce, cheese, and cream.
Vegetable lasagna use all of those things so your child may not notice that it's chopped up zucchini and eggplant in between the layers instead of ground beef.
If the dish is tasty they probably won't complain and won't even notice.
· Mix it In Similar to the vegetable lasagna, giving them no choice or no knowledge is the way to go! When making mashed potatoes, run some broccoli and parsley in the food processor and mix this into your mash.
Your potatoes will turn slightly green and tell your children this is a new color of mashed potatoes.
For the most part it will taste like mashed potatoes, but with a hint of parsley.
They will not taste the broccoli at all, so this is a great way to get them some greens! · Liquefy! Soup is always good, and it's really easy to eat.
There are tons of soup recipes out there, and many of them are vegetable! Tomato, squash, pumpkin, potato and leeks, peas, and mushroom are just a few ways you can get your kids their needed vegetable servings without them realizing it.
You can make the soups creamy and slip in some dairy servings in there as well.
You don't have to tell them what is in it.
Just say it's green soup or yellow soup, or whatever color it came out to be.
Saying the color instead of the vegetable is a way to lure them in.
· Wrap It! Sneaking vegetables into your kids food is also easy when you wrap it.
Making vegetable burritos or vegetable spring rolls are some ways you can wrap it up in different packages.
When kids don't like vegetables, they are usually put off by the sight of a particular vegetable.
Wrapping it all up together and showing them that it's different on the outside may just do the trick.
Every parent wants their child to be healthy, and vegetables are definitely a healthy food.
But what happens when you're tired of the fights and the struggles and everything you've tried is not working? It's time to get sneaky! Trust that your kids will forgive you in the end.
Here are five ideas for sneaking vegetables into your kids · Prepare Food Without Them This is the first and most important part of sneaking vegetables into your kids food.
Make sure they are not around while you cook.
If they see you putting those vegetables in they may not touch that dish with a ten foot pole.
So tell them that you need some space and that cooking time is mommy or daddy time, and that they can go play or watch TV before eating.
Kids are likely to take you up on the offer of play or TV and will leave you alone.
If they don't, work as a tag team and get one parent to keep them occupied while the other one does the dirty work.
· Disguise it Well Mix the vegetables with something you know your kids are familiar with and will always like to eat.
A good example is a pasta like a vegetable lasagna.
Most kids love lasagna because of the tomato sauce, cheese, and cream.
Vegetable lasagna use all of those things so your child may not notice that it's chopped up zucchini and eggplant in between the layers instead of ground beef.
If the dish is tasty they probably won't complain and won't even notice.
· Mix it In Similar to the vegetable lasagna, giving them no choice or no knowledge is the way to go! When making mashed potatoes, run some broccoli and parsley in the food processor and mix this into your mash.
Your potatoes will turn slightly green and tell your children this is a new color of mashed potatoes.
For the most part it will taste like mashed potatoes, but with a hint of parsley.
They will not taste the broccoli at all, so this is a great way to get them some greens! · Liquefy! Soup is always good, and it's really easy to eat.
There are tons of soup recipes out there, and many of them are vegetable! Tomato, squash, pumpkin, potato and leeks, peas, and mushroom are just a few ways you can get your kids their needed vegetable servings without them realizing it.
You can make the soups creamy and slip in some dairy servings in there as well.
You don't have to tell them what is in it.
Just say it's green soup or yellow soup, or whatever color it came out to be.
Saying the color instead of the vegetable is a way to lure them in.
· Wrap It! Sneaking vegetables into your kids food is also easy when you wrap it.
Making vegetable burritos or vegetable spring rolls are some ways you can wrap it up in different packages.
When kids don't like vegetables, they are usually put off by the sight of a particular vegetable.
Wrapping it all up together and showing them that it's different on the outside may just do the trick.
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