Getting your kids to eat healthy foods is like pulling their teeth.  With all the fast food, candy, and their friends eating “stuff” it’s hard to teach your child how to eat healthy food.  Mother Nature created all our food to help keep us healthy while big business creates food to sell.  They (big business) don’t seem to care whether their food is healthy or not.  So it’s up to us to see that our kids have a healthier lifestyle.

Eating healthy food is like having a natural herbal remedy right in your kitchen.  It doesn’t matter if you use herbs or not because every health food has chemical component that help our bodies.  Such as oranges and grapefruit contain vitamin C, avocados and bananas contain potassium and vegetables contain all the nutrients the body needs.  There are more but you get the point.

If you give your child the choice between healthy food and junk food, well, you know what they’re going to choose.

The chances that your child will like all healthy foods is unlikely but if you’re creative enough you can get your child to like some of them.

Here are 3 ways to “disguise” healthy food for your kids.

Sneaking In Healthy Food Is Tricky

Sneak the healthy food in.  Even though it would be great if your kid understood the importance of fruits and vegetables, this isn’t always possible.  If you can’t get them to eat good food willingly, there are ways to sneak them in, such as making muffins out of bananas or apples, or pizza with spinach or pineapple on it.

Another great way is to make smoothies with any fruit or vegetable and freeze it into a popsicle and give it to them as a snack.  Throw some herbs such as spearmint or echinacea in to boost their immune system and they won’t know the difference.  Very sneaky but it works!

Use Funny Names for Vegetables

Call fruits and vegetables by funny names.  You can refer to broccoli as “trees”, cauliflower can be “Calvin Cauli”, making them more fun to eat.  Carrots can be tall men that help kids grow taller, for that matter, you can tell them “all tall vegetables will help you grow tall”.  What kid doesn’t want to be taller?

There are many different names you can call fruits and vegetables, even making up your own if you prefer. It also helps if you give them names like Tom, Sam, or Harry and make it a game like, “Sam will be very sorry to hear you don’t like him.”  Most kids prefer to eat foods that sound fun.

Make Better Tasting Foods

If you have to cover up the real taste of healthy food then that’s what you have to do.  Ranch dressing is great for broccoli, while peanut butter or cheese is a great topping for celery.  Also, think about adding garlic or ginger to mayo to give it a special taste.  There are several combinations for vegetables you can put together to make them taste much better, at least to your child.  Let your child pick the topping even if it’s not something you wouldn’t eat.  Such as ketchup on oatmeal — disgusting, I know but my son won’t touch oatmeal unless I put ketchup on it.  If I put ketchup on anything, he’ll eat it.  You can let your child pick a topping for a vegetable; even if it’s something you wouldn’t normally eat yourself.

Make Vegetables Fancy

Sometimes dressing up the vegetables helps kids think they’re fun to eat.  Just as much as calling them names help kids eat healthy foods, making them look funny also helps.  You can do this by making funny designs on the plate, or setting them up to look like people.  Another way to make them fun is to make the vegetables not look like vegetables.  I know, but it’s not as hard as you think.

Put them on skewers in a basket that looks a head with spikes on it or tacos that look like ghosts (see the picture) or even a cauliflower and olive pizza with a face on it.  There are lots of ways to be creative with food.  Although some parents don’t like their kids playing with their food, sometimes it helps to get them to eat healthier.

There are several ways to make your kids eat healthier, but getting them to enjoy it may take a little extra work but in the long run, it will be worth it.  This isn’t always an easy task, because kids normally don’t like foods that are good for them.  It can however, be done with a bit of creativity.  Hopefully, doing this will help your child develop a love of healthy foods for the rest of their lives.  Good luck!

Tagged as: healthy kids, herbal remedies