How to Incorporate Veggies in Children's Diet

Many parents experience frustration when trying to get their children to eat healthy foods. Pediatricians recommend it, parents believe it to be important for their children, TV programs praise the benefits of it, but children consistently refuse to give in and eat their veggies. With childhood obesity on the rise and the lifelong detrimental effects observed in the adult population, it is now more important than ever to find ways to incorporate plenty of fresh vegetables in every child's diet. Contrary to popular belief, incorporating more vegetables in children's diets can be achieved with the right tools and attitude.

Things You'll Need

• Organic pasta (preferably whole wheat or rice)
• Jar of organic tomato sauce
• Virgin olive oil
• Selection of fresh organic vegetables (Note: in -season vegetables taste better)
• Hummus
• Almond butter
• Raisins or dried cranberries

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Instructions

• 1

  Take kids with you to your local farmer's market or grocery store and let them choose veggies that look good to them.

• 2

  Hide veggies in sauces. Place a handful of spinach or cooked greens (collard, kale, chard) or a few broccoli florets in a blender with the pasta sauce. Blend until smooth. Warm up the sauce and toss with freshly cooked pasta. Sprinkle some olive oil on each bowl and serve.

  Incorporate any variety of veggies into other sauces; you can also incorporate these sauces into casseroles or rice recipes.

• 3

  Provide fun snacks such as colorful veggies to dip in hummus or "ants on a log": celery sections filled with almond butter and studded with raisins. Use any fresh vegetables of varied colors you have in the house, such as cauliflower, carrots, peppers, cucumbers or celery. Cut them into bite-sized pieces, and place the platter on a table easily accessible to the children so they can snack from it throughout the day.

• 4

  Cut vegetables into fun shapes, stack them into colorful towers or create funny faces each time you serve them. Let your kids be the artists and ask them to create a different design each day with vegetables.

• 5

  Create colorful veggie kebabs with your kids and grill them along with your selected protein for dinner. Use any combination of zucchini, squash, peppers, mushroom, tomatoes and onion sections for the kebabs, and brush with barbecue sauce.