Veg - please give advice

[emmywoo]

My 3yo dd flatly refuses to eat veg. She is good at eating fruit, meat, pasta, most dairy but just no veg and I am a little concerned that she isnt getting all the nutrients due to this. We had a lovely sunday lunch today and all she did was have a plate of meat and gravy, any ideas on what I can do to try to get her to eat veg. xxx

Keep presenting it in small amounts. Bright colours - such as Carrots - may be more appealing. Try various methods of cooking, Raw, Boil, Steam. Cut into different shapes - rounds, battons.

Soup and Pasta Sauce. Surprising what you can put in those. For soups, my rule is to stick with just two main vegetables (so Carrot and Potato for example). Pasta sauce can contain quite a bit but keep it simple at first, such as combining tomato and carrot.

My ds very sniffy about food -

My ds loves pasta but not tomato sauce - but I do it in a way that I ensure it gets a coating with no (bits).

My normal tomato sauce is two cloves of garlic cut large (not small so that you can aviod bits), a small chunk of onion and basil.

For my ds I also add some carrot and red pepper as when you blend it's all red. A ngreen veg that when blended in tomoto sauce doesn't show is courgette.

Also why don't the whole family have a food tasting session and get everyone to rate - I've started doing this at home and ds is now sometimes open to trying new things and discovering he likes them.

I have the opposite - ds only eats fruit, three types of veg (even hates chips or any other style potato) and cheese sometimes.

Drives me nuts.

I use bribery all the time, but it seems to work! Keep putting it on her plate in small quantities. Encourage her to have one mouthful of the veg during the meal. My DS1 (4) doesn't like meat much, but I make sure he has one mouthful of it before he is allowed to have his pudding (a yoghurt, jelly, ice cream or stewed fruit). This seems to work with him. My theory is that as long as he gets used to the taste, sight and texture now, he will start eating it in larger quantities when he is older. Time will tell if I'm right!!

Really good book on 'hiding' veg is Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively delicious. Worked for us

My 3 year old doesn't like cooked veg. She has only just started eating it raw when she started helping me 'cook' each meal. She would do some cutting and stirring and watching etc etc and eventually started to reach out and grab bits and piece. She says that mushrooms are dangerous when faced with them in a stew but eats them happily raw

what about funky things like corn on the cob (you can buy mini cobs frozen from waitrose)?

My 3 yr old DD won't touch mushrooms, carrots or most other veg either, HOWEVER, we have recently discovered that she LOVES sweetcorn/corn on the cob. She will eat it all, then pinch mine, her dads and baby sisters until there is absolutely none left ! Yesterday I made a chicken roast and was thrilled when I managed to convince her to have some carrot/swede and broccoli (only the flowery end bits) mushed into her mash and gravy. I had to "feed" her but at least she ate it !! I'm prepared to do most things to get a bit of goodness down her neck (I'm not a dreadful mum as she does eat tons of fruit on a daily basis !).
Good luck, just keep trying and I find bribery works wonders

try soup. Here in Portugal children have a bowl of soup most days before lunch and dinner. Is a great way of getting veg into them. Also try blending carrots and courgette into mince. They cant spot the veg and also makes the meat nice and sweet. My DD loves it