Fruit is often a more popular choice than vegetables because children prefer sweet tasting food. Telling a child to eat their veges ‘because they are good for you’, is not the ideal way to promote vegetable consumption. For many children the term ‘healthy’ has a negative meaning. (It often becomes synonymous with not being allowed to eat favourite foods.)
children find the smell of veges strong
It is no surprise that the foods most disliked by children are vegetables. Children often have a better sense of smell and taste than adults – so strong smelling vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and brussel sprouts are often the most disliked. Milder smelling and tasting vegetables such as pumpkin, kumara, beans, carrots, corn and courgettes are usually tolerated and therefore consumed more willingly.
Cooking can intensify smell and taste so if cooked vegetables are being regularly rejected by the child, try serving a plate of raw or blanched vegetables (raw beans, carrot/courgette sticks or blanched cauliflower florets) with a vegetable or fruit dip such as guacamole.
fruit and vegetable servings per day
By offering fruit or vegetables in a ‘non-fresh’ form such as canned or dried can also help children meet the target of two fruit servings and three vegetable servings a day.
Canned vegetables or fruit are often more acceptable because they are softer and are easier to chew. When selecting cans look for varieties that are ‘reduced salt’ or in ‘clear juice’ as these are better nutritional options. Canned fruit or vegetables are NOT a poorer option when compared to fresh, as heat treatment in the canning process can actually increase the bioavailability of some nutrients and this is good for the body.
use encouragement and your imagination
- Add grated carrot and courgette into mince so it disintegrates
- Add fruit to baked products such as muffins or scones and make the baked product child-bite sized
- Add berries into pancake and pikelet mixtures
- Offer a fruit smoothie for afternoon tea
- Puree broccoli and stir through soup or gravy
- Add orange juice to pumpkin mash
- Mash carrot and parsnip together
- Make vegetable soup and strain, offer a small mug of clear soup before dinner (your child may like ‘drinking’ the vegetables)
- Make salads with fruit as well as vegetables
If a child only likes fruit and avoids vegetables, don’t give up hope – keep offering a variety as part of a meal and ask that your child at least tastes each item. Don’t make a fuss if the experience is unsuccessful - repeating the trial every few weeks might encourage acceptance.
And don't forget to use your own imagaination to add some variety. For inatance, using fancy vegetable cutters, or simply cutting fruit and vegetables into fun shapes, can make otherwise boring food suddenly seem fun and inviting to try.
Talking to your child about eating a ‘rainbow’ is another way to encourage fruit and vegetable variety. Fruit and vegetables of different colours provide many health benefits.
- Red varieties (tomato, watermelon, etc) may reduce cancer risk
- Orange varieties (carrot, mango) improve night vision
- Yellow varieties (corn, kumara) may reduce cancer and heart disease risk
- Green varieties (broccoli, beans) may reduce cancer risk
- Blue varieties (eggplant, grapes, bluberries) may reduce cancer and heart disease risk
good habbits now for good habbits later
the most common reason for poor fruit and vegetable consumption in later life is a lack of knowledge of how to prepare them. Get children involved in meal preparation so that the skill and habbit of including fruit and vegetable variety is acquired when young, setting your child up for a balanced diet when older.
But, understand that there will be some foods your child will honestly not like, now or perhaps even ever! Maybe agreeing to select a few that can be avoided will help the child feel okay to accept all the others as a compromise.
Nikki Hart, Nutritionalist
