As parents we “know” that our children should be eating a minimum of 5 servings a day of fruits and vegetables however getting them to actually eat their fruits and veggies is a different story!

Here are some suggestions that might help get your kids eating their fruits and vegetables, thanks to our friends from Chooserly.com for helping us adding some points:

1. Keep Fruits and Vegetables in Sight: Stock your fridge full of washed and ready to eat fruits and veggies.  Having them cut up in slices makes it even easier for your kids to reach in and grab a quick healthy snack.

2. Remove the Competition: If you provide only healthy options they will get eaten!  Leave the junk food for an occasional treat!

3. Prepare Meals Together: Bring kids into the kitchen starting at a young age. Toddlers can wash and rip lettuce, preschoolers can measure and stir, and older kids can find recipes and help create meals. Children are far more likely to dig into a new dish if they helped prepare it!

4. Take them Grocery Shopping: When you have the time, take your children grocery shopping with you and let them pick out a fruit or vegetable. Challenge them put a rainbow in the shopping cart!

5. Serve a Fruit or Vegetable with Every Meal: Every day and every meal, fruits and veggies should be on the menu. Eating this way makes it easy to get the minimum 5 servings of produce a day!

6. Keep it Simple: Veggies taste best when you don’t do too much to them.  Eating them raw seems to be a favorite with kids.  Add some yummy dip and your done!

7. Be a good Role Model: If you expect your child to eat vegetables, you need to be eating them, too!

8. Eat the Same Meals: Make one meal for the family. Don’t start the habit of serving different menus for everyone as you’ll end up with a house full of picky eaters and a lot of extra work in the kitchen!!

9.  Keep trying: Kids need to be exposed to, and ideally taste, a new food as many as 10 to 15 times before they’ll accept it.  Just getting them to take one bite is a victory!

10. Make it Fun: Kids are fun people and they love playing games. Keep that in mind  and  make healthy eating a fun challenge rather than a battle.

Happy Healthy Eating
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!

Whenever we go grocery shopping my daughter is always drawn to anything that is her favorite color…PURPLE!!!  So it didn’t surprise me when she squealed with delight at these gorgeous purple peppers and asked if she could get it.  It is such a vibrant color and was the perfect topping to add to our homemade pizzas!  We also spent the rest of our shopping trip doing our best to recite the Peter Piper Picked A Peck of Purple Peppers tongue twister

Colorful peppers are generally more expensive than green ones because they have been left longer on the vine to ripen and gain their color.  This also results in less yield per plant so it’s more costly for farmers.  But we always think it’s worth the wait and the extra money to enjoy colorful peppers like this beautiful purple one!

Happy Healthy Eating
Kia

Kia Robertson is a mom and the creator of the Today I Ate A Rainbow kit; a tool that helps parents establish healthy habits by setting the goal of eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day. Kia is passionate about creating tools that help parents raise healthy kids!