Kids and veggies

[thesmokegoesupthechimneyjustthesame]

Son is 3 and typically loves fruit. Will eat an ungodly amount of raspberries, mangoes, strawberries, grapes and so on. But the only veg he'll eat on its own is corn on the cob or cucumber. Things like carrot or pepper sticks are ignored. Peas are also left which is madness to me. I'm hardly serving him brussel sprouts and cabbage.

Anyway, his eating is not concerning but I would like to up the veg intake. Thankfully he loves soup and also spaghetti bolognese so I can get lots of onions, carrots, garlic, lentils, leeks, and whatever else in him with these.

Any sneaky ways you up your kids veggies? He doesn't like veg where he can obviously see it so will eat around sweetcorn in tuna pasta for example. Doesn't seem to be an issue with soup bizarrely. Maybe I just need to be constantly making soups for him!

Like with cauliflower blitzed up in a cheese sauce, you can do the same sort of thing with butternut squash.

My friend's 5yo will only eat cucumber, tomatoes and olives as far as veg goes. Doesn't eat soup unless it's cream of tomato! So unless it's carrot and broccoli grated up mixed in spag bol level hidden, he doesn't eat anything else veg containing. Hopefully he'll grow out of it in time.

Just want to give you some hope that my DC1 was like this at 3 and eats a lot more veg now at 6!

I actually never went down the blended route for various reasons and I'm sort of glad because now they eat visible veg (oftentimes still reluctantly though, don't get me wrong).Whereas a lot of their friends still won't because they only ever get blended sauces at home.

Will he eat a veggie lasagne?

Does he like pulses? They count as one of your 5 a day too? We are vegetarian so we eat a lot of tinned beans, my kids (6 and 3) like : chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, cannelini beans, and of course the classic baked beans! We add tinned beans to stews, curries, fajitas, or just have them on the side of whatever, or mixed in with rice/couscous/bulgur wheat.

Just keep offering. Have them out on the table for grazing. Have him help with food prep (you chop veggies and he puts them in bowl). I also often put raw veg in a communal plate on the table at every meal. They eat surprisingly more when they think someone else will eat it all first!

Honestly, he’s eating well for a 3 year old. Both of mine went through incredibly picky phases as toddlers. They’re 7 & 12 now and the veg is usually the first thing they finish.

I suppose it's easy to fall into the habit of not putting it out because whenever I do it's not eaten and wasted. But that's on me to be better at then using it up elsewhere.

Definitely think he eats brilliantly, but would just like to increase the veg intake. At the moment that needs to be in "sneaky" ways, but we'll keep offering veg in other ways too and I'm sure he'll start to expand his tastes

He won't eat pulses in things, like chickpeas in curry he'll pick them out. He refuses baked beans point blank which is usually a kid staple!

I'm not too worried as bizarrely he'll eat chunky veg when it's clearly visible in soup. When I make bolognese the carrots and onions are clearly visible and he enjoys them. Merrily says "I love carrots" but won't eat carrot sticks for example. So definitely not at the stage of having to blend and hide everything to mush, but would just like to increase the veg he eats on its own like he would with fruit.

Nursery is massively helping as he tries more there with his nursery friends.

Agree with the previous poster to keep offering. DD ate every veg going till 2, apart from cucumber, pepper or whole tomatoes which she’s never ever accepted (she’s fine with cooked tomatoes in sauces etc). At 2 we started losing the veg she’d accept until we were down to peas (which she’d literally eat frozen and call them lollipop peas so maybe try that?) and corn on the cob like you.

I kept offering/ serving even the ones she’d never accepted, somewhere around 4 cucumber became a firm favourite. Now at 4.5 she’ll even eat the odd cherry tomato occasionally. Pepper still a firm no. But she once again regularly eats broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, sugarsnap peas, butternut squash.

To get the others in/ extras I do do some sneaky hidden ones too.

I make ‘carrot cake’ porridge with grated carrot, courgette and apple then add some raisins, cinnamon and either nut butter or ground almonds.

Also add grated courgette to cheese scones or savoury muffins (and to most things really as it seems to be pretty unnoticeable once cooked).

I do creamy garlic chicken and mushrooms with rice or jacket potatoes - a few of the mushrooms sneak in unnoticed when they’re in the sauce! Similar with adding swede/ turnip, onion and mushrooms to stews which she loves. When the gravy is thick enough she doesn’t seem to mind what’s in it!

Lots of thick veggie soups with lentils added and then blended up - have even managed to hide some red pepper in here!

She loves prawns and noodles so if I chop stir fry veg up small enough I can sneak some of that in too - certainly the bean sprouts, she’s not above picking anything ‘leafy’ she comes across out though!

Already suggested but I do make a tomato sauce with loads of onion, garlic, celery, carrot, courgette etc and then blend it - use this as pizza sauce or for pasta dishes.

Mine also loves olives which although salty I think at least have some other good vitamins in