Fun Tips for Kids' Foods

Fun Tips for Kids’ Healthy Eating

Hide vegetables—in soups, under melted cheese (my son loves broccoli cheese soup), in casseroles (gravy is especially good for this), and sauces such as marinara (zucchini takes on the flavor of stronger ingredients). Cakes and cookies can also hide zucchini, carrots, pumpkin, etc. These, applesauce, and banana are also useful to take the place of half the butter or oil used to lower fat content.

Involving the other senses—young kids enjoy unusual presentations of food or foods that look like creatures or something in nature: ants on a log—celery with peanut butter and raisins; squash rings with mashed potato mounded in the middle stand in for Saturn; see who can make the loudest bite on a taut-skinned fresh apple.

Empowering Kids to Choose

Setting boundaries—give each child a bucket or basket with the days snacks in them and let them decide when to eat them (works best with kids who have begun to exercise impulse control and helps them see the relationship between decisions and consequences—eat everything at once and they’d have nothing left for the rest of the day.) You can set a time limit of no snacks—say an hour or two—before meals. Sometimes I’d put in extra and let the kids know it was okay not to eat everything. They saved the leftovers for the next day and learned to listen to their bodies’ signals whether they were hungry.

When my kids were young, the prevailing wisdom said one soda a day was okay. Now, they say none. Anyway, back then I put one soda, one 100% juice box, and water in the bucket along with two or three fruits, depending on the size of the kid, and a few of the following list of snacks that I varied each day, again taking into account the size of the child. Most dieticians I’ve read, say about twenty percent of calories can be junk food.

List of Snacks

Cut-up vegetables with cheese or peanut butter; a single-serving bag of baked chips or pretzels (I like Sun Chips, which are lower in fat and salt); homemade cookies or a cookie bar made with half regular, half whole wheat flour and oats, along with hidden vegetables and/or fruit in place of half the fat; nuts or seeds (sunflower seeds were always a favorite); chocolate, dark if they’ll eat it; and the occasional prepackaged goodie.