How to get children to eat vegetables - Parenting Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
I know there's the traditional like you can't leave the table till you eat your vegetables, can't have dessert till you eat vegetables. Well I'll tell you what, as a child I was so stubborn that did not work for me. So my mom got really creative in hiding vegetables in foods. So in the morning we would have a fruit drink with lots of fruits. My mom would just pack it full of spinach and kale and I'd get my vegetables in that way and because of the strong taste of the fruit and the sweetness of it, I would eat it slash drink it. And then she got creative in cutting up the broccoli super small and hiding it in quesadillas for lunch sometimes. At dinner time she would hide the, like she would do soups where she blended up the vegetables super fine so you can taste it. So just a lot of creative ways of hiding the vegetables so I would eat it without thinking too much about it and not being able to taste it very well.
Video 2 Transcript
My parents are really good at introducing us to a lot of different kinds of foods from a young age, specifically lots of different kinds of vegetables. And I would say that most my siblings are really, really unpicky because of that, because my parents started introducing us to foods from other places, different kinds of foods, spicy foods, things like that at a pretty young age. We're all pretty unpicky, which is good. So I would say just introduce them early on and introduce them in lots of different ways.
Video 3 Transcript
So the best way I found to get children to eat veggies is to put on a video for them to watch on the tv and while they're watching the video walk around with a plate of snacks and those snacks are veggies like carrot sticks or celery sticks or cucumbers or grapes or clementine pieces or apple slices and then just to change it up you know walk around and just be like hey here you go and you know see who takes it. Maybe not all of your children will take the veggies but I've been pleasantly surprised at how many do especially when they're with cousins or friends you know once one kid starts grabbing a handful it's just like a knee-jerk reaction the other kids want to grab whatever it is even if it's veggies and I mean you can also add veggies into smoothies you know you can do that.
Video 4 Transcript
How to get children to eat vegetables. That is a great question, I love it. For us, we have always planted a garden. We've probably planted 27 gardens in 28 years of marriage. And we started our family right off the bat and as soon as those children could crawl and walk and be with us outside in the garden they were and you know, yeah, they ate some handfuls of dirt but the process of growing our food, harvesting it, it was delightful and all of our children love most every food, especially vegetables and fruits because we planted it and they were with us with that process of seed to plate and it's wonderful and healthy and we've never had to struggle with most of our children. We've had a couple, our son doesn't like onions right now, like big deal, right? But overall our children eat really well and healthy and having a garden really was the catalyst for that, I think.
Video 5 Transcript
Growing up, my pediatrician suggested that when we start our kids, we start them with vegetables before fruits and start with the less sweet vegetables before the sweeter ones. And so, from the very beginning, we always made vegetables an important part of their diet. And even if they didn't love them, we continued to offer them to them. We made sure that we always served vegetables. My husband and I both like vegetables, so we made it a point to not make the kids different meals than what we ate. And so, they grew to enjoy what was being served because that's what we were all eating together. And so, my kids are all older now, and for the most part, most of them will try just about anything and like most vegetables. So, you can go to all the tricks and try and grate things up small and chop them up small, hide things, or just do what I did and start when they're young and expose them to lots of them.
