How To Get My Toddler To Eat More Fruit and Vegetables?
As parents and caregivers, one of the key responsibilities we all hold is to give our children the nutrients they need to grow healthy and strong. However, this is far easier said than done. While some toddlers will eat fruits, vegetables and any other food with no issues, some toddlers are much fussier. This can be very frustrating for parents who are desperate for their toddler to eat balanced foods, while being met with resistance from their baby.
So how can you get your toddler to eat more fruits and vegetables? Here you’ll find three key tips for achieving this. Let’s take a look at some tricks of the trade from parents who have mastered the art of feeding fussy eaters!
1. Incorporate fruits and vegetables seamlessly into your toddler’s favourite foods
Sometimes it is impossible to convince your toddler to take a mouthful of mashed carrots without them being immediately spat out again! Instead of going round in circles in this messy vicious cycle, try a different approach. If your toddler loves mashed potatoes, for example, you could mix some of the hated mashed carrot into their favourite mashed potato. It is likely they’ll gobble it down without realising it.
Start with a small amount of the food they don’t like in a full size meal of the stuff they love, then gradually increase the quantities. You don’t have to convince your toddler to suddenly love carrots; instead you can avoid the battle altogether, and give them the nutrients in vegetables without them logically knowing it.
2. Let your child choose
Some toddlers will resist vegetables and fruits because they feel like you’re forcing it onto them. Once they get a bad association with a certain type of food, as soon as you show it to them you’ll be faced with a grumpy, resistant toddler. To avoid this, make their experience more interactive. For example, having a few little bowls of chopped fruits and veggies that your toddler can dip into with their hands and try on their own removes the association of you trying to feed them something nasty, and replaces it with a fun, interactive mealtime experience.
3. Make fruits into candy-like snacks!
If you have a toddler who has an aversion to fruits, you can dress fruits up to change this aversion. If your efforts to give your baby the vitamins that fruit can offer have been thwarted time and again, you should try some of these ideas…
- Freeze little slices of fruit to make them more like sweets. This will take the fleshy texture out of the fruit, something that a lot of toddlers hate.
- Make mini popsicles from fruit juice. Fruit popsicles are a great way for your child to get the vitamins they need while also acting as a dessert treat.
- Partially cover them in yoghurt. If you want your child to at least be tempted to try fruit, try covering strawberries or raspberries in yoghurt.
Getting your toddler to eat fruits and vegetables is difficult, but with these expert tips, we hope it’ll be a piece of cake!
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