Do you struggle to get your child to eat their vegetables? Share your tips and tricks below.

[EllieSmumsnet]

Created for Veg Power

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Are meal times a struggle in your household? A healthy, veggie-rich diet can help improve our children’s mood, learning and overall health, however it’s not always easy to encourage children to eat more vegetables. We want to hear about your mealtime challenges and top tips to help make mealtime veggie battles a thing of the past.

• Post your stories and advice in the thread below to be entered into a prize draw.
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About Veg Power: “80% of our children are not eating enough vegetables, with a third eating less than one portion a day. We are a not-for-profit alliance on a mission to inspire kids to love vegetables. You might know us for our award winning Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign with ITV, or our new Simply Veg programme to support parents.”

Here is what Veg Power have to say:
“Half of mums tell us that they struggle to get their kids to eat more vegetables, with many admitting that they have given up trying. Our mission at Veg Power is to get kids excited about vegetables and to help parents and carers serve up those vegetables with confidence. Although we're supported by an amazing panel of nutritionists and chefs we find that the best ideas often come from parents. We'd love to hear your views. Let's talk veg!”

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

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providing a healthy plate if your responsibility.

Eating it is theirs

Creating a battle over what they eat sets up power and control issues. Just don’t!

Put it in front of them and take it away without comment at the end. No alternatives or snacks just dinner back if hungry before bed.

Talk about other stuff at the dinner table and stop watching over them and harassing them about what goes in their body, no one is benefitting

We grow as many of our own veg as possible - a sure way to keep the kids interested. We also grow different varieties - yellow tomatoes, purple peas.

Mostly not been too much of an issue. Try to offer a range of stuff, raw and cooked. They have their favourites and some they really don’t want to eat.

I hide vegetables in sauces, some can be grated such as carrots and mushrooms. Mushrooms are so easy to hide! Peppers, onions, courgettes, celery, these I chop very small. We eat a lot of pasta with sauces.

For meals with more visible vegetables I make sure they have a vegetable I know they like and keep encouraging them to keep trying the vegetables they are not so keen on. I don’t force them.

I try different textures including mashed veg and soup. I find soup is a good way to get vegetables in them.

My very reluctant vegetable eater eats more veg than he is aware of.

😂

I honestly think if I was a better cook and I had more time we’d be in a better place. My kids are fussy and sometimes just getting them to eat something is a win. I stopped making an effort because I’m tired and when I do, they don’t eat it and it’s food and time are wasted. I feel guilty they don’t eat better all the time.

‘Green soup’ - spinach, broccoli, courgette, leek.
‘Red Soup’ - tomato, carrot, onion and red pepper.
pasta sauce - spinach, cream cheese and cheddar

Put different vegetables out on the plate or in a stew ect, don't make a fuss about what is eaten and what's not.
Also if making a bolognaise or something blitz some veg into the sauce, carrots, celery, tomatoes, you can get more vegetables in that way without anyone noticing. X

Also you can make veggie fritters, pancakes ect. X

Be relaxed, put veg they eat on the plate with one they don't. No pressure it tgere if they don't. Make fruit and veg smoothies. Blend it into sauces and gravy's.

grate them - grated carrots into a spag bol, along with a finely diced yellow and red pepper makes a gorgeous bolognese, added to pasta, or with mini roast potatoes works for me

I used to grate carrot into Bolognese sauce. It also makes it smoother.

Offer baby veg first - it's often sweeter, and if not - it they are roasted they have a different taste - espcially things like honey roast parsnips - mashed carrots with potato with some herbs.
Small broccoli trees worked for us - cauliflower is still a challenge

Add small amounts on their plate during weaning, pureed first - to get used to the taste. Add maybe 2 small pieces of cooked carrot, broccoli and garden peas along with their meal, and praise when they try it, and don't get stressed and make it a battle if they don't.

Use your food processor to bend veg, and add this to your meal.
Grated beetroot in a cake is just lush - then tell them they have eaten beetroot in their chocolate cake - and watch a smile appear on their face

If you have a good diet and put their high chair next to you when they eat their weaning food, and watch you eat your vegetables, this will become the norm for them and be a natural progression onto eating and enjoying vegetables.
I started with pureed carrots as they could see that the colour was the same as I was eating - just small amounts at first - its a slow progression, but the joy of food starts with family dining together

My kid is still a rather good veggie eater (he hasn't heard from other kids that veg is supposed to be no good I guess), and two things work if we want him to try new things: a) "feeding" it to this toys (dinosaurs love broccoli, the Lego animals love nibbling at any vegetable...) and b) letting him try it between mealtimes - he might randomly refuse to eat steamed carrot batons at the table, but will happily eat an entire raw carrot if handed to him as a snack that he can run off with.

Never ever try to disguise food or hide it in something else. You risk the carrier food being rejected then too. My oldest child had what would now probably be diagnosed as ARFID. We saw health visitors, GP, paediatrician and eventually a dietician who introduced me to a variant of what I now see described as division of responsibility. I provided food and my son decided what (if any of it) he would eat. Anything left was cleared away with no fuss. The total opposite of the "show him who's boss" type advice that well meaning people were giving. It completely defused mealtimes, which could be very stressful. The variant to the method was that I offer not a big and varied meal but his "safe" food with one not too different addition on a separate plate - to try or not as he wished. Because all he would eat was potato waffles at the worst of it, I introduced differently shaped potato products such as smiley faces then graduated to chips then roasties and gradually onto other foods. It took years not days, weeks or even months, but as an adult he can find something he'll eat on most menus if we go out.

Interesting to read various success stories. Two of my DC will eat almost any fruit, veg or salad. The third almost none - hates the texture, whether cooked, raw or hidden in sauces etc. Is now a teen and has a very limited range of beige foods. 🙄

My tips are - if they eat with you, and see you eat fruit and vegtables each day their curiosity will get the better of them, and a small portion of what you are eating (cooked and pureed at first) is a great way with weaning and then onto fruit and veg - worked with my 2 - they loved a roast dinner with all the veg - their diet now is not as good - but teens and tweens palette somehow change 🙄

My 3 and a half year old regularly sits anmt the table for lunch or dinner and will say she doesn't like it as soon as she sees it. I calmly explain that this is what we are having today, and everybody has to try it before we decide if we like it. Then have no more discussion about it, we turn the conversation to "how was your day?", "Did you hear that noise outside?", "I saw something funny at the shops today! Shall I tell you about it?"
9 times out of 10 the distraction is enough to get her to at least try it!

I started with the sweeter ones first, carrots and sweetcorn and peas, then add small amounts of broccoli, mange tout and cabbage later - I offered small amounts, praise when tried, and just did not try they portion again for a couple of weeks if they spat it out - I think being calm and trying small amounts, gradually increasing works. If you eat a good amount on your plate also, they will glady try this change in diet.

I have children and work in a nursery so have some experience getting children to get their vegetables.

At work I serve all of the vegetables unless we know that they defo don't like it.

We tell the children that anything they don't like they can leave it on the side. In our nursery we all sit together at the tables and staff eat aswell. We let the children take their time and its not a rushed activity.
This creates a positive role model experience and we can gently encourage children to have a try.

Most children will at least try the vegetables eventually, even if they don't eat it all.

The vegetables are also served in loads of different ways. Boiled, chopped in salads with different dresses. Offered raw for snacks.

At home I did the same. But now my children are older I know what they do and dont like so I wouldn't serve something they wouldn't eat.

This way of eating has served me well. My children are not fussy eaters. They will try food from any culture and there are only 3-4 vegetables that they don't like.

Just make no fuss. Put them on the plate with something I know they will eat. Don't pressure or force them to eat them. Don't take refusal once as them not liking it. Regularly offer them.

Completely different story with Autistic DC though 😂

I left veg with a stronger taste until DS's were 3 or 4 (the broccoli cauliflower and sprout) although I have always hid brocolli in a spag bol - just a few florets for extra fibre and vitamins. I think cauliflower cheese is a great way to introduce this veg to a plate, and small amounts of a new veg at a time.
Carrots are a great starter as they are sweeterr and can be eaten pureed, roasted and in small chunks.
I would not make a battle and worry too much about the about of veg your little one eats, what they hate today, they may love tomorrow and vice versa (I found that peers at school had a lot do do with my DS suddenly hating cauliflower cheese)

I always notice on threads like these, people say we did x, y and z and our children aren't fussy eaters, so do it like this and yours will eat properly too. The impression being given, of course, is that if your kid is extremely fussy, you have only yourself to blame.

For those dealing with persistent food refusers, those with sensory issues or with ARFID, if only it were as easy as that.

Just putting this here to remind you that it is not the parents' fault. Eating disorders of any kind are extremely difficult to resolve, even with professional guidance.

As you were.

Absolutely OhNoNotThatAgain.

I feel the same way about sleep threads. There’s always someone who is convinced their perfect sleeper was down to their own perfect routine, and nothing to do with the fact their baby liked sleep and didn’t have any underlying issues stopping them sleeping. (Can you tell I had terrible sleepers).

I was a fussy eater as a child. I can tell you that the things I didn’t like, I genuinely hated the taste of, and no amount of clever parenting would have changed that. Luckily my tastebuds changed as I got older and I now eat everything.