5 ways to get your child to eat more veggies

Having conversations with our children about the importance of eating a healthy, balanced diet is so important in creating healthy habits that last a lifetime.

Strong nutritional literacy helps our children make informed choices enabling them to lead more active, healthy lives.

Despite best intentions, most parents at some stage, experience difficulty getting the recommended intake of vegetables into their children’s diets.  With this in mind, below are five tips for doing this, undercover, as sometimes secret squirrel is the only way!

• Start the day with a smoothie – smoothies are a fantastic way of increasing your fruit and veggie intake.  Green smoothies are simple to whip up and taste delicious!
• Veggie Noodles – these veggie spirals are a great alternative to pasta and noodles and provide flavour and colour to any dish!
• Hide them in pasta sauces – grated zucchini, carrots, onions and other veggies are easy to disguise, help to bulk up a sauce so that it goes further and your kids won’t even know they’re in there!
• Savoury Muffins – these are a tasty addition to lunchboxes and also a great alternative breakfast solution.  Savoury muffins can be made in advance and stored in bags in the freezer to use when required.  Have fun playing around with different flavour combinations and add some cheese or cheese alternatives for an extra flavour explosion.
• Veggie chips with hummus for an afternoon snack – are a quick, easy to prepare snack that the whole family will want in on!  Chop carrots, zucchini and sweet potato (or veggies of your choice) into similar sized “fries” and bake in the oven with a little olive oil.  Serve warm with some hummus and voilà! You can also slice them really thinly so they are round and more like packet crisps.  Kale is a great alternative and is light and crispy when served straight out of the oven sprinkled lightly with some sea salt.

Why not let the kids help in the kitchen, they love getting their hands dirty, spirally, blending, grating, mixing and baking and can then enjoy the fruits, or veggies, of their labour!