Deceive Your Picky Eaters Into Eating Healthy

If you are a parent and you have a child who is one of those proclaimed picky eaters, you are probably pulling out your hair trying to get your child to eat healthy. It isn’t easy when your child turns up his nose at all those good foods you know will help him grow up healthy and strong. But children tend have minds of their own and they can be very stubborn. If they don’t want to eat something, sometimes there is no way on earth that you can get that food past their lips. Don’t despair though. You can still get healthy foods into your child, as long as you have your mind made up. You can use stealth and sneakiness. What your child doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

By now you are probably thinking…”But I don’t want to deceive my child!” but if you think of the benefits in the long run, you will see the value of it. You child needs certain vitamins and minerals for his young body to grow in a healthy manner. Of course, you can give your child multi-vitamins, but the best source for vitamins, minerals and nutrition is still derived from natural foods. That means that your child’s health will benefit from eating real food which contain these healthy aspects.

You don’t have to actually lie to your child to get him to eat healthy foods. All you have to do is evade. Your child is probably too young to know what certain vegetables are anyways, but if you present them in the right manner, your child may never know that he is eating healthy.

Consider zucchini. Most picky eaters will turn up their noses at a side serving of zucchini on their plate, no matter how tasty it may be to you. Just the color of the vegetable, or maybe the consistency, will turn off most picky eaters. So how do you get your child to eat zucchini? Put it in a dessert, like zucchini bread. But for heaven’s sake, don’t call it zucchini bread – try “Zed Bread” instead. With a dessert presented to him, your child will never know the health benefits of the zucchini inside the great tasting treat. And by the way, shredded zucchini (or shredded carrots) in cakes help to keep them moist.

(Just as an aside, the health benefits of zucchini are many. Zucchini contains protein and fiber in significant amounts, as well as folate, potassium, beta-carotene and vitamin C.)

You can do this hide-and-seek game with many vegetables. Try making a noodle soup with vegetables. Most children will bypass their pickiness when it comes to soup ingredients. Slurping up soup with noodles is great fun. Or if you still have a problem, try puréeing the vegetables to make a cream soup where children will have trouble spotting the individual vegetables in it.

You can create many desserts and goodies that contain vegetables you normally may not be able to get your picky eaters to eat. There is carrot cake, squash (or pumpkin) pie, or even cookies with vegetables in them.

You can even try mixing the vegetables with fruit into juices. Most kids love fruit juices so adding a little extra vitamins by incorporating vegetables into your child’s juice will not be noticed. You can try making your vegetable-fruit juice concoctions into frozen pops as well. Do you know a child that will not eat a frozen popsicle?

Dealing with picky eaters can be tricky. All you need to do is to be smarter and trickier. That way you can avoid the problems in getting your picky eaters to eat healthy.