Vegetarian fussy eater 4.5 year old food ideas?

[Veggielove84]

Hey everyone

my child is a self made vegetarian, but she has always been a fussy eater. She is thriving so much though and actually a bit overweight. She eats goats dairy mostly with some soy yogurt or goat yogurt and some regular cheese when she has pizza.

Typical dinner foods are plain rice, plain pasta, eggy bread, chips and that sort of stuff, plain as in sea salt and either butter or olive oil as the sauce.

Typical day

Breakfast- Goat milk then cereal with goat milk

snack- either fruit or crisps or a nakd bar or something , she will not eat anything I try to bake her like muffins or flapjacks but will eat my smoothies and spelt flour pancakes

Lunch- sandwich on 50/50 bread with jam or almond butter and jam or occasionally chocolate spread. nothing else on it... paired with an apple and something crunchy usually those baby organic crispy snacks and often a piece of dark chocolate

another random snack and couple times a week a cake when family come over

Dinner- rice, pasta, pizza, chips , eggy bread paired with cucumber or berries of some sort. dessert is more fruit and sometimes a coconut grape sweetened frozen yogurt she thinks is ice cream.

supper- Goat milk and a banana with buttered crackers often oatcakes to get some oats in. maybe some dried dates with this. if still hungry a soy yogurt or goat yogurt sweetened with some honey or maple syrup.

Can I have some feedback please?

What about edamame beans? My kids love popping them out of the pods and they don't have the same kind of skin as a pea.

if she eats the egg fried rice without the peas, then try her with pasta carbonara, but make it without the ham/bacon.
Cook her favourite pasta, drain it, put back in the hot pan, add a knob of butter, a beaten egg and some grated cheese. Stir all together well, the egg will cook in a moment. It will be quite dry so she might like it ... I think you said she didn't like sauce on pasta?

You need to keep exposing her to different foods and don’t give up after one attempt. My dcs repeat my phrase now of “you have to try something 17 times before you know”.

My dd is very very fussy. Some days she kicks off and won’t eat what I make and others she’s fine. She gets quite upset - it’s the texture and feel of foods she doesn’t like. She’s also got a very strong sense of smell (and taste) which doesn’t help.

So we keep trying. I remind her she doesn’t have to eat something but I expect her to keep food on her plate.

She eats more fruit than veg. Only veg she eats is carrots and occasionally peas. This is a contrast to her brother who eats a much wider diet.

So I keep persevering. I find she tries stuff more when she’s cooking with me, and she will try things outside of meal times. She actually gets quite stressed at meals and at one point apologised to me for not eating lots of things - that’s when I knew this was more than her being stubborn (she’s 6)

My dd does however eat meat - lamb mince and chicken. She knows that animals = meat but we talk about the food chain etc so she gets it.

never thought of edamame :)

love the veggie carbonara idea she might entertain a creamy sauce now, haven't tried it in ages when I attempted to give her mac and cheese a while back

yes that's a great idea about talking about the food chain , will try that and see what she thinks of it :) its a shame for them they just don't seem to understand that eating nothing but carbs and sugar is unhealthy no matter how much I tell her that in as best a way I can

The carbonara won't be wet and creamy like Mac & Cheese, it will be much drier, not like a runny sauce at all.

If she eats rice, have you tried risotto? Make it with home made chicken stock, stir in some cheese at the end of cooking. If she eats that, next time add very finely chopped mushrooms....

Don't forget you can double skin broad beans to make them easy to eat and brightly coloured!

At a cafe recently, the owner presented my fussy 3 yo with a cheese sandwich and chips arranged to look like a face with a few bits of cucumber, grapes, kiwi, cherry tomatoes etc. She said it was all about how things looked. May help you.
Also, DS (is really fussy and overweight) was eating all the things he liked on the plate eg chips first. Somebody pointed out that by the time he reached the beans, they were cold so didn't taste good. I have been plating up something different a few minutes early and putting the things he likes on his plate hot from the oven. I tell him to eat his mash first while his sausages cool down, etc.
It's been a stressful year but I am making ice lollies and sneaking fruit and veg into them and mashing veg and coating with breadcrumbs.
The HV is visiting us next week to weigh my DS. It's put me under a lot of pressure to get his weight down and try to get him to eat healthier but apparently our kids don't do enough to burn off the amount of food we give them. Reducing portion size is the advice I have been given. A portion for a 3 year old is 1 fishfinger, 6 chips and a tablespoon of beans. I was giving double!

What veg can’t you eat due to your health issues, op?

You could just send her to school - eating with other children and no options for anything else, plus other adults teaching about healthy bodies

Can you even call it vegetarian without any veg? A new name needs coining.

Same age as my DS, I have never given him supper. I could imagine how I'd find enough hours in the day for another meal.

Breakfast is 7:30, lunch is 12, dinner is 5. Bedtime is 7.

What time is she going to bed? Or how do you fit in the meals?

of course its vegetarian and she eats lots of fruit! ok not so much veg but the things she will eat are not junk and little refined sugar, vegetarian as its a plant based diet and bread is plant based not just obvious vegetables...

anyway a lot of great suggestions here, thank you very much :)

get or make by printing off pictures your own recipe book. We have a disney princess one that went down well. Also allow her to cook with you.

DD wont eat peas but will eat them raw just out the pod. Same with carrots, prefers them as they are.

Some advice I can give you is always try to match a carbohydrate with some type of a protein. I'm a diabetes educator and I always see this... for example, if you're giving her a sandwich with jam... add some peanut butter to the sandwich. If you're giving her pasta, make sure there's a protein like lentils. Carbs on their own spike sugar levels, but when you add a protein, it balances the sugar levels... keeping the blood sugar consistently balanced, instead of having a crash. It will also keep her more full, for longer. But I know it must be hard since she's picky... I make this recipe for my little one, and for my hubby and they both love it. It's packed with protein and vegetables, and you can also mix up the flavor. Make sure you puree the soup really well so she doesn't notice the veggies (if that's an issue) and put some fun pasta in it, so it looks attractive. Hope this helps.. lots of love..kay.

I have two veggie DCs and the youngest decided he hates veg?! I put broccoli on his plate every day for a month until he one day took a bite which eventually led to eating an entire piece etc

Thanks everyone. I love the idea about making sure some type of protein is involved.

We have had some changes. So far she now likes hummus with cucumbers, plain omelette and is interested in orange pasta (Lentil pasta) she also had half a bowl of porridge this morning. I also made her protein pancakes she likes (oats, eggs, almond butter, touch baking powder and maple syrup) will keep trying new things all the time now :)

I have also switched her cereal to have some mornings still to organic cornflakes with only 0.6g sugar per bowl as opposed to 4g or more in the usual cereal so fingers crossed if I pair it with some naturally sweetened full fat yogurt on the side that could be another good breakfast option.

Please don't make her a risotto with chicken stock as suggested by a pp, that isn't vegetarian!

Can I suggest a blog that a friend of mine, who's vegan, found when her kids were small?
veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/

This lady was bringing up her child as a vegan, so it's a bit more limited than a vegetarian diet, but the way she combines foods and made meals interesting and fun for her kid is quite inspiring.

My DD is a bit fussy too and while I hate the idea of hiding veggies, needs must, here are some things I do in case they help:

Cook riced cauliflower and red lentils in with rice
Add courgetti noodles to spaghetti
Make white sauce out of cauliflower and/or cashews

I make DD ice lollies which have a fruit base for the taste (usually mango or banana) and I add a veg (she chooses a colour so spinach and kale for green, beetroot for pink, red peppers and tomato for red, carrots for orange etc), blend with a high protein plant based milk, add but butters (usually cashew as this makes them creamy), groundflax and chia seeds (for extra omegas). She knows now that veg goes into the lollies and gradually over the years I’ve upped the veg content so she’s used to them not being massively sweet

She also eats a lot more since I realised she likes it all seperate and hates mixed up bowlsof food like stews etc

I’d also add flax and chia to as much as you can - great in porridge/pancakes etc