Wondering what’s the best approach to get toddlers to love vegetables (and gobble up those greens)? It may not happen overnight, but in this article, you’ll learn how to get your kids to say, “More veggies, please!”. Getting your picky toddler to eat vegetables daily to meet the recommended intake can be really tough (especially if he refuses to eat anything but mac and cheese!). Raise your hand if you picked up broccoli off the floor before (thrown in disgust by your tot). Most of us have been there!
Growing up in Paris with two little brothers, I never remembered mealtime being difficult for my parents. So when Ava was born, I asked my French mom (who is also a doctor) for some tips on raising a vegetable lover. And what she shared was truly eye opening.
So here are 10 tips to get a picky toddler to love vegetables…
and put an end to mealtime battles for good!
Start Early (But Make it Tasty)!
Let’s be honest: jars of bland baby food do not taste great. Many parents will anxiously try a pea or green bean jar, only to see their baby make the most disgusted face. I did that, and concluded that my baby hated peas, which in hindsight was totally meaningless. It’s great to make vegetables the very first solid food your kid eats. But it’s also very important to make them taste good. If your baby associates veggies with great taste, it will make a world of difference when he gets to toddlerhood.
There is a bit of a myth here in the US that babies and kids enjoy “kid food” and are too young to appreciate strong tasting ingredients. But educating babies’ palates can actually start very early. French parents are not afraid of introducing strong tastes at a very young age. The key is to make vegetables taste delicious: whether you just add a spoonful of sour cream or whole milk yogurt to a premade jar, or season the puree with some herbs or cheese. The goal is to make the meal tasty so your baby actually enjoys eating it. It’s the first step to get toddlers to love vegetables and look forward to eating them when they get older.
Don’t be scared to introduce your baby to a lot of different flavors. Everyone was baffled when my daughter ate truffle risotto and balsamic glazed salmon at 10 months. She is now a pretty adventurous eater at almost 2 and really enjoys eating a lot of different veggies!
Make Vegetables Fun
By introducing veggies into your toddler’s playtime, you will peak your toddler’s curiosity. There are tons of ways to turn vegetables into a game or fun activity. This is something I have done with Ava since she was very little and it’s a great hack to get toddlers to love vegetables.
If you have a yard, create a vegetable garden and grow your own veggies! Your toddler will love to get their hands dirty and learn how the vegetables grow. A toddler who has seen their own tomatoes grow for a few months will be pumped to taste them when they end up on their plates.
When we were little, my grandparents would take us to the farm to pick fruits and vegetables. I still remember how excited we were to try everything when we got home. So take your little one to the farmer’s market and show him all the different vegetable shapes and colors. Let them pick which ones they want to cook! Let them play with all the raw vegetables and feel the different textures. Make sure to involve your toddler in choosing the recipe and prepping the veggies together.
Analyze Your Eating Habits
Do you enthusiastically eat vegetables, or do you avoid anything more colorful than a potato? Our kiddos look at us and copy our every move. It’s clear that our eating habits have a big impact on our kids’ choices.
A study reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that children, when presented with a variety of healthful and “junk” food, consistently selected items that mirrored their parents’ typical food choices. It doesn’t work to preach “eat your vegetables” while leaving your own broccoli untouched.
Take this as a challenge and a way to increase your veggie intake as well. You’re going to find that when you start to walk the walk after you’ve been talking the talk, your child will be quick to follow your lead and join in.
Develop Your Own Love of Vegetables
If you don’t love vegetables, fake it ’til you make it. You’ll get there eventually, too. Just start somewhere, like adding tomatoes or roasted peppers to your sandwich.
Order mushrooms and olives on your pepperoni pizza. Make it a personal goal to increase your own vegetable intake each week, especially when you’re eating around your children. To get toddlers to love vegetables, you have to lead by example!
And don’t forget how simple it is to make veggies taste great. Long gone are the days when you just have to eat a simple salad and call it a day. Now you can air fry kale and sauté up mushrooms and make so many great flavors using vegetables as the focus.
Surround Your Kids with Colorful Vegetable Imagery and Items
This is one of my mother’s best tip to get toddlers to love vegetables! Believe it or not, our minds are quite fickle, and this goes for kids as well. If you’re trying to get them to eat more veggies, give them a space that is visually appealing to do so. Kids often associate vegetables with green goo on their plate that looks much less tasty than mac and cheese. So we need to reframe this to make veggies exciting!
I vividly remember my mom’s recipe books when I was little. We would look at them together and look at all the gorgeous colorful pictures. I absolutely loved those cookbooks!
So bring more veggies into your kids’ environment. Get some colorful books featuring vegetables, browse healthy cooking magazines full of appetizing and colorful photos. Get a toddler friendly cookbook as a gift and have fun prepping and cooking together. Take and hang fruit and vegetable prints around the kitchen. Keep a bowl of apples on the counter or a plate of raw veggie snacks out during the day. All of these vibrant, enticing visual input reinforces the message that fruits and vegetables are a part of daily life.
And my number one tip for getting your kids to love vegetables….
Keep Fresh Fruit and Veggies Handy
The reason that so many people reach for junk food is that it’s always ready to eat. It’s much easier to serve frozen chicken nuggets and Easy Mac than make a fresh vegetable dish from scratch. And some nights you’re just simply too tired
Maddening, right? But the truth is – if you keep fresh fruit and veggies ready and handy, this is what everyone in the house will start to snack on. Have carrots peeled and the celery washed and ready to go.
Put a bowl on the table full of fresh fruit that is cleaned and easy to access. Once you do this, you’ll start to see that everyone in your house will start to snack on that type of food over the unhealthier options that you might have instead.
Get sneaky and hide the veggies
Sneaking vegetables into food has become a popular technique for boosting children’s nutritional intake. We have tons of hidden veggies recipes on this blog and I personally hide veggies into everything! My daughter is a pretty adventurous eater and she enjoys eating lots of vegetables (thanks to all of my mama’s tips!). But I still boost her nutritional intake whenever I can because we can all use some extra veggies.
If you have a very picky eater who absolutely refuses to eat vegetables, then hiding them is your best bet. At least for now! But all the tips mentioned in this post are still extremely helpful to slowly change your child’s perception of vegetables and their eating habits.
As your children grow, they will increasingly make their own food choices. And no one will be hiding zucchini in brownies for them forever! So don’t give up and start implementing some of these hacks today.
This doesn’t seem to be working… should you give up?
None of this advice is meant to be a quick fix or miracle. It’s all about baby steps! You cannot try one technique and expect your child’s eating habits to change immediately. Choose several ideas to implement over the course of a few months. In time, your toddler will start to warm up to the idea to try new foods! The most important thing is to not give up.
The sooner you start this healthy eating regime, the sooner your child will get on track. And day by day, you’re going to start noticing that your child is eating less of the junk and more of the vegetables that they need.
