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!

I sometimes find it helpful to give myself a theme when coming up with healthy snacks for my daughter!  Since we are always working on eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables I decided to serve up daily snacks based on color! So for the next few posts I’ll be posting snacks ideas based on color groups! Today is RED day!!!!

Hannah had watermelon, raspberries and strawberries for her RED day snack!

Here are some other ideas for healthy RED day snacks:

Red pepper slices
Radishes
Apples slices
Cherries
Grapes
Pomegranates
Rhubarb

Next week will be ORANGE snack day!

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!

Our school year is winding down, just two weeks to go, that means we won’t be making school lunches for a couple of months!  So before we put away our lunch gear I thought I’d share how we tackle school lunches! Making lunches is a group effort at our house…that way one person isn’t left having to make lunches every single day. We have fun putting together healthy combinations and since we’re the Today I Ate A Rainbow family, we’re always sure to include colourful fruits and veggies!!!

I  like to involve Hannah in the lunch making process because I think it’s important for her to feel comfortable in kitchen and learn skills that will last a lifetime! We usually put together her lunches the night before school because our mornings are busy enough! She washes the fruit and veggies, chops things that are easy such as cucumbers, fills her water bottle and helps out any way that she can.  Our goal is for her to make her own lunches so the more we teach her now…the sooner that will happen!

The only thing I always do myself, is write her a note. Sometimes it’s a knock knock joke, sometimes it’s just a funny doodle, and others are messages of encouragement and love! It’s a way for me to be a part of her day at school and remind her that she’s special!

Making lunches together is a great time to connect with your child!  If your kids are finished the school year already then get them involved in making lunches at home!  Maybe they’ll even make you lunch one day!

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!

After a fun trip to the farmers market Hannah and I made roasted rainbow carrots for dinner!  We’re so used to seeing orange carrots that it’s such a treat for our eyes to see bright yellow and deep purple carrots!  Purple just happens to be my daughters favorite color so whenever we come across purple produce she is more than excited to try it.

We like to cook together as a family as often as possible as there are so many opportunities for little ones to learn and help out in the kitchen!

Look at that purple!!!!

Sunny yellow carrots!

I pretty much just watched Hannah prepare this…she took charge and had a blast…I was so proud to be HER assistant this time!

Ta da!!!  Our delicious roasted rainbow carrots!

I would like to encourage you to get your kids involved in the kitchen, yes it can sometimes mean that things take twice as long and can be twice as messy when they first start helping out, but if you keep at it you might be pleasantly surprised and find yourself being the helper just like I did this weekend!

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!

When we think about eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables it’s fairly easy to get in your green, red, orange and yellow…but the blue/purple color group can be trickier to work into your diet every day!  I am always on the lookout for purple produce. Purple happens to be my daughter’s favorite color so when we go grocery shopping she is always the first to spot anything purple!  We were both excited when we came across some purple kale!!  We’ve been enjoying our green kale that we turn into chips…yum!  It’s a healthy and easy snack to make!

This is what we plan to do with our lovely purple kale!  If you’ve never made kale chips before here is a great video by my friend Dani Spies

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!