7 Tips to Help Your Child Eat Healthy Food
1. Realize That Children Naturally Want To Eat Healthy
Children know how to eat healthy, and they are naturally drawn to healthy foods. But there's a catch. When we have a motive behind our words and are trying to mold them to eat healthy, they rebel.
We then resort to desperate measures -- even offering rewards or punishments and sometimes using force to try to get them to eat their vegetables! The problem is that in each of these instances, we are pushing our children to do something WE want them to do, rather than letting them have their own choice.
I learned this the hard way, through Milah's super-strong will. When I treated fruits and vegetables as a natural part of life and just served her a kiwi and blackberries or cucumbers and hummus, she liked them. But as soon as I made her finish her something "healthy" before serving what she really wanted to eat, she refused the healthy food.
2. Remove Your Motivations
Rather than using force or manipulation, communicate to your child that you love him or her unconditionally regardless of what they eat or what they do. Most children, when asked, don't know they are loved unconditionally. They need to be told that it's okay to be how they are. They will naturally choose to take care of their bodies.
As you become more in tune with your body, you'll notice that you begin to crave what your body needs. For instance, after having the mercury fillings drilled out of my teeth, and having gone on long flights (which release heavy metals in the jet fuel), I found myself desiring cilantro, which is one of the few foods that helps your body rid itself of heavy metals.
3. INSPIRE Them to Love Healthy Food, Don't REQUIRE Them to Eat It
Teach them the facts without the manipulation and let them use their ageny. When you offer a green smoothie for the first time and they refuse, that's okay. Don't make a big deal of it or force them to try "just one sip." Just ask again the next day, and eventually they will be interested in trying it.
4. Teach Your Child The Benefits of Healthy Foods
When it comes to nutrition, there is absolutely no need to make anything up. Healthy food is amazing. When we help them understand how fruits and vegetables will help them be stronger, smarter, and get sick less, they will start asking for those foods.
Here are some ideas you might slip in:
#1 When they are going running at a track race or P.E. mention that raspberries stabalize the rhythm of your heart; therefore improving performance in any kind of physical test.
#2 Bananas improve your brain function. Children who eat a banana before an exam consistently score higher because potassium supplies the electrical currents in your brain that are used to transmit information.
#3 Watermelon is packed with vitamin A, which is responsible not only for forming a picture in your brain of what you are seeing, but dimming and brightening light (like a camera lens). Your eyes need vitamin A to see at night and to prevent squinting in bright sunlight. You can take a watermelon with you to the beach to prevent sunburn. When people wear sunglasses to the beach, they are more likely to get burned because their body thinks it's evening.
#4 Zucchini helps carry hemogolbin. When you are running up a hill, you reach a point when you're tired. That tiredness is when the oxygen is not carried well throughout the body. Those tired muscles that refuse to fire are deprived of oxygen. Zucchini is a good energy boosting food.
#5 Beets are rich in iron.
Valya Boutenko was at a demonstration where they handed out beet juice. Her friend took the first sip and thought it tasted horrible. When Valya explained that a lack of iron causes exhaustion, depression, and anemia the girl said "I have all of those problems!" That friend took the beet juice back and commented "Wow, this tastes so good! I wonder if I could have another of these! I'm going to make beet juice when I get home!" It's funny how much affect knowledge can have on someone's taste buds, haha.
5. Be Satisfied with Their Progress
Children almost always learn to love fruit first before vegetables. But remember that fruit has amazing cancer-fighting properties. Fruit is loaded with antioxidants, which prevent your cells from oxidation. Antioxidants also repair cells, keep your skin elastic, and keep your eyes sharp. After they like fruit, start with mild tasting vegetables like cucumbers or zucchini and go for the celery later on.
6. Get Them Involved
Milah is much more likely to eat carrots when she peels them and when we make hummus together and she gets to blend it.
Milah also loved working in the garden and pulling potatoes out of the ground or picking tomatoes -- and it's great when she eats a tomato right off the vine!
Make it a special treat to go to the farmer's market together. Let them taste samples of fresh peaches and see every variety of tomato.
Talk about how beautiful a carrot is when you bite it in half. Let them see how spinach glistens in the sunlight and you can see each cell. Show them how beets look when cut cross-wise and how by cutting apples in half horizontally you find a star in the middle.
In the grocery store, ask your child to choose three heads of broccoli, or see if they can find the brussels sprouts. Help them become part of the process.
7. Don't give up too soon!
On average, parents present a new food 5 times before deciding their child must not like it. Studies show that for a child to truly explore a new food, they need to have it presented to them 17 times. The first few times they may just get used to seeing it, then touch it, then taste it, before they finally decide they like it.
Understand that depending on your child's nature, they may not like a ton of variety in their diet.
Milah isn't super adventurous when it comes to food. I have to be okay with her eating the healthy foods she does like really often. Luckily, she enjoys drinking carrot juice, almost all fruit, eating tomatoes and cucumbers, and "wasa" crackers with avocado. She often eats something different than the rest of the family because I realize that Brielle and I are much more willing to try a strange food and like it.
It's a great challenge as a mother to help our children eat healthy. I don't think anyone else can quite understand it. It's a lot of effort, but it is totally worth it to give your child a lifetime of health!
Many of these ideas came from a free downloadable lecture by Valya Boutenko that can be found here. I'd totally recommend watching it because her enthusiasm is contagious!!!
