EATING
Fruit and Veges Kid Style
Look at television commercials on Saturday morning or turn to the cartoon channel and the ads will tell the story. What you will immediately observe are the number of ways food manufacturers have literally cooked up to mask the wonderful flavor of fruits and vegetables. The assumption is that kids won’t eat it unless it is filled with sugar, dyes and aromas that have nothing to do with food. As a matter of fact, many of the things we called food are nothing more than chemicals that have been created to mimic the real deal.
Parents are then left with children who won’t touch anything that is not packaged in brightly-colored cellophane and with a toy in the box.
So what is a parent to do? I am so glad you asked. Here are a few tips to get you started. And remember—patience, patience, patience!
- Set aside two hours to visit your supermarket’s produce section with your child. Choose a market like Wegman’s or Whole Foods, or an organic market (which are popping up everywhere). Take along a pad and pencil and make a game of it by asking your child to find fruits and vegetables using the alphabet. For example, apple, apricots, avocado, etc. Challenge them to see how many they can find for each letter.
- After completing the list, have your child choose one from each category, purchase the fruit and or vegetable with a promise that it will become a part of a meal. To make it easy, choose 6 to get started and return to the market each week to purchase the next group of six until the list is completed. Also, be sure to have them taste the fruit and vegetables in their natural state. This will help them to be able to identify foods when they taste them in the future. When tasting be sure to have them smell the food and describe the textures. What I have found is that people in general do not know what foods taste like as they only eat them in a processed state.
- Slowly replace any processed foods that are in the cupboard with things that are fresh and whole. If you child balks at first, allow them to choose which items will be replaced with a fresh item of their choosing.
- Get your child busy—with helping with preparing the meals and allow them to offer their own suggestions of what might be good in certain dishes; for example, salads.
- Become a good role model. Allow your children to see you grab an apple when snacking rather than chips, candy and sodas.
Yumi!
