Vegetables for children. You don’t need any sauces! – Dietetics – Articles |

The role of vegetables in the diet

Vegetables are in the second step of the baby food pyramid. This means that they should be appear in basically every meal. Their presence in the diet is important due to the content of a number of vitamins, such as vitamin C, folic acid, beta carotene, minerals such as magnesium, calcium, iron, copper, or phytochemicals such as betanin, quercetin. They are a treasury of nutrients in a small amount of calories. Their nutritional density is therefore high.

Nothing by force

Each of us wants her child to eat healthy and eat a lot of vegetables. We often focus on it so much that our desires backfire. Worse, we instill in the child that food can be a reward saying that if he eats vegetables nicely, he will get something sweet. Eventually the child, eating broccoli, keeps asking how many more bites it will have to eat to get dessert. So instead of focusing on eating another bite of vegetables, it’s better to put in the effort to teach your child how to make good choices on his own. How to do it?

• Prepare nutritious meals for the whole family to eat – the child tastes best what is on the plate with the parent. So try to set an example in advance and let him try more and more new dishes. Children are born explorers, they love discovering new things. Allow your child to experience and do not force them to eat unless they like something. Please try again in a while. Nothing will happen to him if he eats less or not at all. When he is hungry, he will certainly inform you about it.
• Don’t force another bite – Children, until we break this natural controller for them, know perfectly well when they are full. The portion sizes should be controlled by themselves, our role is to serve them with valuable things on the plate. If you force more bites, you are teaching your baby to ignore the signals from his body.
• Give up dessert – if you are introducing a sweet meal in your child’s diet, try to either include it with the planned meal or as a separate meal. The thing about dessert is that it appears as a reward that the child strives for after the ‘torment’ with dinner. Putting them next to each other gives hope that the child will treat them equally.
• Allow your child to choose – never ask your toddler “what would you eat”, because children love to invent, just for the sake of inventing it and it has little to do with the appetite for a given thing. However, it is worth allowing the child to make some choices, but within a limited framework. Before cooking, you can ask your child if they would prefer spinach or cauliflower for dinner. This will give him a choice, but will limit the scope for inventing uncreated dishes that he would not eat anyway (e.g. tomatoes with jam).
• Remember about a good atmosphere when eating – meals should be well associated with the child. If you are fighting for every bite of carrot, then both you and your baby will be tense and upset when it is time to eat. Try to make the eating time a joyful and pleasant time with your loved ones. Your focus is on this, not what your child is eating or not eating.
• Serve new items with your favorite dishes – it is worth enriching the child’s diet with new and new flavors so that it learns to enjoy food. However, if your toddler is a fussy eater, it will be easier for him to serve them together with an already well-known meal.
• Don’t get clogged with snacks – try to introduce about 3 hours intervals between dishes to allow time to feel hungry. If a child eats something all day and sips sweet drinks, his tummy is still full. Where should I put my plate of nutritious soup?

Bet on colors and flavor

Food must be delicious and colorful to make encourage our little explorers to reach for them. So don’t expect your little one to eat soggy and gray-green spinach with taste, even though I don’t know how to praise him. Remember about the right time to cook broccoli or cauliflower so that they are crunchy and springy. Gently salt the water and sweeten it. Serve them with butter or breadcrumbs, as well as herbs and spices. Nutmeg goes well with cauliflower, and Provencal herbs and garlic go well with broccoli. Boiled carrots with butter and a bit of dried ginger are also a real treat. Cooked radish is just as tasty, and at the same time it is less spicy than fresh. Also, try to serve soups with cream if the pieces of vegetables do not taste very good to your child, or make smoothies and juices. Sweet carrot mousses or beetroot mousses can also be a good idea for an additional portion of vegetables. You can find some ideas for nutritious desserts in the article on healthy sweets.

Let your baby play

It is worth getting to know the child from an early age z with different flavors and let him eat with his hands. Thanks to this, he learns not only the taste, but also the texture and consistency of vegetables. Natural curiosity is an ally in accepting them in your daily diet. It’s also worth the baby be involved in the preparation of meals. After all, what we do ourselves tastes better and you have to try it.  

If your kitchen is full of vegetables, fruit and other valuable products, and you eat meals together and cook healthy, your child will not die from hunger. Try to treat them as you would like to be treated. Nobody likes sticking a spoon in their mouths and everyone would rebel.

Main photo is from flickr.com