Getting a toddler to eat vegetables????

[lizzlebizzle33]

When I started to wean my son he would eat almost anything, broccoli being his favourite, now he's almost 2 and the only veg I can get him to eat is potato 😩
He just pushes away or throws it on the floor, peas, tomatoes, sweetcorn green beans, everything!!
He will eat some fruit, loves apples and bananas but that's it.

Does anyone have any tips on how I can get some veg in him?

Disguising it is the only way. Making broccoli and cauliflower cheese is a great way to get kids to eat it and also mashed carrot and swede into buttery mash with cheese. Maybe give him tomatoes in a pasta sauce where you can also hide courgettes, onions and mushrooms?

There's quite a few YouTube videos on making veg look pretty.

You know in Chinese restaurants when they make radishes and swedes look like flowers? Like that. They make little pictures with it.

2 year old veg refuser here too (actually refuses a lot of other foods too but that’s a whole different thread!) grater is your friend here, we grate veg (carrots/courgettes/pepper/onions etc but anything really ) into most things dd eats (which subsequently we then eat as I cba making different versions) into all lasagna / cottage pie / chicken curry / chilli etc

I recommend Annabel Karmel toddler meal plan book; its great and loads of fun ideas. I think you have to make eating fun. Don't know if you've tried making mini kids pizzas using English muffins, tomato passata topped with cheese and any toppings.

You just grill them*

I’ve got one of those... I hide it as much as possible, and give multi vitamins. And I do offer it, always. Then I try not to fret. He eats fruit, and making a big deal out of it (IMO) isn’t helpful. So if he won’t eat it, ok - no fuss, I just remove it. I always try to offer it as part of a meal he likes - so sweet corn with fishfingers, baked beans and sweet potatoes for instance. (Thank goodness he eats sweet potatoes!).

I even hide it in cake - sweet potato, banana and chocolate brownies may sound vile, but he eats them, so I make them.

The Jamie Oliver seven Veg sauce is good too, it’s nice and smooth. He has that on gnocchi because he refuses all pasta. Pasta, ffs!

This too shall pass.... my dm loves to remind me that I ate only ham and cheese for ages, but I am now a healthy adult who has a varied diet, and no scurvy

Jamie Oliver pizza dough is also a piece of pish and freezes well, I have discovered that half and half wholemeal and 00 flour works too. Then you can cunningly hide vegetables under all the cheese.

We started doing carrot, pepper and cucumber sticks for our boys to eat whilst we cook dinner (they're 3 and 18m). They love it because they see it as a bit 'naughty' to have a snack just before dinner time and they're also hungry enough to eat it! It does spoil their appetite a bit, but because I know they've already had some veg I'm a little less worried about what they do or don't eat during dinner.

I'll second the Jamie Oliver 7 veg sauce. My two year old refuses a lot of vegetables but will happily eat this sauce.

You can also make a big batch of the veg sauce and freeze it to go with pasta or on pizzas etc.

Trick number one - name it as he likes...I make some kind of minced chicken cutlets sneaking inside zucchini and carrot and call it chicken nuggets and then he happily eats it
Trick number two- as one of the pp said - grater is your friend. I grate veggies and sneak them under the cheese in the pizza and into his mac and cheese...etc. there is a good site called kidspot and they have lots of hidden vegetables recipes.

These are all great ( or should I say 'grate') tips thank you mums, I'll be giving the pizza idea a go tonight😄👍🏻

Update~ he loves a cheese and pickle sandwich, just grated half a carrot in with the cheese and he didn't even notice lol 😍