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Get you kids to eat their veg?
Here are 10 ideas from me. Please feel free to add your own.
1. Don’t make eating veg a big thing, eat it or leave it, it’s all good
2. Cut it up small that they get bored with trying to pick it all out
3. Let them cover it in ketchup
4. If you are already vegetarian there is no issue, eat or starve!
5. Lead by example, eat your own veg with a smile on your face
6. Acknowledge that the texture may be more of an issue than the taste
7. Get creative, make little flowers or pretty patterns
8. Remind yourself that it can take 10 or more tries before a taste is accepted
9. Negotiate, you eat your veg, you can choose tomorrows meal
10. Let them help you to grow and prepare it
All I know is that when I met my other half, many years ago now, he only ate butter beans! He did not like veg, was not interested in it, didn’t want to know.
The first meal I fed him was vegetable lasagne. Yep I have a mean streak, but he needed to know what he was about to let himself in for.
He knew that once we had kids, there was no way he was getting out of eating his veg, so he learnt along with them, that you can adapt to most things with time. For him it was apparently more about the texture than the taste.
Our kids loved growing their own carrots and beans, and this definitely helped maintain their interest when it came to trying them.
Even with a full list of ideas to try we did resort to making up some food rules to help encourage our girls to eat up.
One was that everything on the plate had to be tried, even if not liked last time, as we all agreed that taste buds change with time.
The second was that at least five mouthfuls of veg should be eaten before pudding. If they had room for pudding, they had room for a little more veg.
I’m happy to say that both girls, now teenagers, eat a good range of veg. Not mushrooms though, still working on that one.
Me I’m not too keen on fresh tomatoes.
Not everything is to everyone’s taste, please share which veg is still a no go for you.