My two year old son hardly ever eats vegetables. Sometimes we can successfully hide veggies in food - spinach is easy to hide, sometimes mashing carrots work. I would like to know what other moms with this problem have done successfully. He loves meat, fruit, rice, and potatoes. He drinks plenty of milk and water and one cup of juice a day. Any ideas or simple recipes would be great! We just bought a juicer and are planning to mix veggies in with the fruit juices.
Thank you so much for all the responses. Many of them are working! My four year old (who loves his veggies) has even helped us - we will all pick up a veggie and see who eats it first. This one really works! Also, the juicer is wonderful - we have put broccoli, spinach and other greens in the juice and he loves it. I am also looking in to Juice Plus and Vitamix. Thank you all for your ideas!
Try, frozen, mixed veggies and keep them frozen. Started doing this when my daughter was teething and she liked them frozen for a number of years.
You could also give him a liquid veggie supplement.
You could also not worry about it! Sometimes we just need to relax and put these things in perspective. Eventually he will start eating vegies. Kids just love beige food!
My sons liked vegetables so this was never a problem for us, and they have both grown up to be fine chefs. I did find that they always preferred their vegetables raw though. You could try having colorful finger salad as an appetizer before dinner when they are hungry - leave it out for everyone and don't make an issue about him eating it. You might try different kinds such as jicama, cherry tomatoes, sweet anise, red peppers, etc.
Hello D...
Have you tried UNCOOKED veggies. example.. carrots. my son loves uncooked carrots, but can't stand them once cooked.
he also loves raw red bellpepper, which is sweet..
oh and rather than juicing (which takes the fiber out of the food) what about "blending" a smoothie.. you can definitely hide things in those.. add a little tangerine juice and water (otherwise way too sweet) and you can add blueberries (high in fiber) and or strawberries BIG in vitamin c and then throw in a tiny bit of kale.. yes, kale. in small doses , they won't know it's there.. kale is loaded with vitamins.. including spinache.. and the blueberries and or strawberries help mask the flavor and or a banana which makes it more creamy.. add some ice and it tastes really good..
good luck
How about soup? We used to have a nanny who would make soup all the time, and she'd put all kinds of veggies in there. You could make a puree-type soup, or just a clear broth with diced veggies. My kids LOVE soup, even during the summer.
We have a Vita Mix, which can liquify anything if a few seconds (among other wonderful tasks, like heat soup as you make it or freeze milk into ice cream).
Spinach, carrots, and cabbage do not have strong flavors, so can easily be hidden in anything. I alway make Spake = spinach cake. It's green and chocked full of spinach. I also can cut the fat in half. I have not used cabbage, but I heard the effect is the same. If a recipe needs liquid, I use a pureed veggy.
Sometimes I mix spaghetti squash in with the pasta and pureed veggies into the sauce.
Plus we have a rule in the house... eat the good for you food (veggies) and then you can have the not so good for you food. (dessert). It's never a fight. Eat your veggies and get dessert. That simple. No veggies, no dessert. It's not a discussion. To top it off, dessert is filled with veggies to.
This weekend we are experimenting with chocolate spinach ice cream.
Have you tried bite size carrots, celery and other things he can dip in ranch? If you use a lower fa ranch, it's sometimes worth it just to know they are eating some veggies : Good Luck! Also, I know they aren't quite the same, but my anti veggie kid does like baked beans.
I'm trying out the book Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. A lot of things in there are quite simple and fast. So-good luck!
L.
Try mixin veggies in meatloaf and corn bread. you have to be creative. im sure if youlook online you can find some easy recipes to try. good luck
Going with the juicer idea, I think V8 Splash tastes like juice but has veggies in them. Other then that I would keep offering them to him and hope he grows to like it.
Those are my guesses for you!
Best of luck!
Did you read Jerry Seinfeld's wife's book? J. did a cook book that hides veggies in all simple recipes. We have a newborn, but the cook book before our daughter was born to try it out and the recipes are easy and delicious!
I was having a similar isssue with both of my children (now ages 4 and 7) and about 3 years ago a friend of mine told me about Juice Plus+. It's 17 different fruits, vegetables and grains in a capsule, chewable or a gummie. Juice Plus+ is whole food and not a vitamin. It made sense to me because I realized we all were not eating enought fruits and vegetables every day. Since we have been taking it, we are all healthier and we are now actually starting to eat more vegetables (like you, my children always loved fruit). I feel like I am more relaxed at the dinner table becaue I'm not monitoring every bite of vegetables they eat. We are no longer having the power struggles because I know that they are getting this baseline of nutrition in their bodies every day. It really seemed like once I relaxed, they did too! We also have converstaions about the colors we have eaten each day (the goal is to eat all of the colors in the rainbow with fruits and vegetables...not m&m's!) I would love to share more information with you. After taking Juice Plus+ for 3 years, I decided to become a distributor. My website is www.DianeLovesJuicePlus.com You can also email me at ____@____.com
Good luck and I hope this helps!
-D.
try some different sauces. My daughter likes her veges with a mayonaise sauce. Mostly mayonaise with a touch of lemon and soy sauce.
Try mixed vegetable & fruite juices - V8 has several varieties. The veggies are disguised as juice - works great. Be careful about spills, juice can stain.
I steam a little frozen corn & peas in the microwave & then throw it in the blender with spaghetti sauce. The peas and corn sweeten the sauce a little and the blender gets rid of the suspicious lumps of onion & tomato etc. in the sauce. It's great as pizza sauce or for any kind of pasta. My son likes to dunk his chicken nuggets in it. Also, the Bertoli spinach & cheese ravioli is a big hit at our house - not too much garlic like some other brands.
I think you could puree cauliflower & hide that in mashed potatoes as long as you add parmesean cheese or something else yummy to camoflage the smell.
Using a blender or Vita-Mix for smoothies is perfect! Getting fruits and vegetables in raw and whole form is best. By juicing you lose the neccessary fiber and heating destroys the nutrients and enzymes we want from eating our produce. Believe it or not I sneak kale (yes, kale!) into smoothies for my kids. Try this: 1/2 c. mango, 1/2 c. blueberries, 1/2 banana and 2 leaves of kale (omit the rib). I use approx 1 c. water or almond milk as a base. Your little one will eventually acquire a taste for vegetables. Honestly, my family prefers raw and they will occassionally dip into dressing or hummus. They used to think hummus was bean dip. When they're little you can get away with so much... Good luck!
Jessica Seinfield has a great cookbook that uses pureed veggies in everyday foods/snacks. It is pretty good. Check it out!
Have you tried making muffins with zuccinni and carrots. You can always use applesauce as the sweetener. They are pretty yummy.
How about pesto sauce on fun shaped noodles.
carrots and celery dipped in either ranch dressing or smeared with one of the butters (peanut, almond, or seaseme seed).
Have you tried serving veggies first? Sometimes I'm able to get my 2 kids to eat more of their veggies when it is the only thing available. My 16 month old loves dumping food on the ground, but when she realizes that the peas are the only thing she can eat (I'm making dinner), she will pick at it and eat a few.
Maybe mashed sweet potatoes & tell him they're just orange mashed potatoes? mashed veggies in the mashed pots. veggies in meatloaf. veggies in scrambled eggs. our pediatrician suggested for my son a choice of one lick or one bite each day. Finally at 4yrs old he's coming around. also look at the cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, Deceptively Delicious.
You know what my mother in law did to get her four adult sons to eat vegetables (she has one who WILL NOT eat any vegetables)…she cooked cauliflower and then puréed it to the consistency of mashed potatoes. For the longest time, the boys, one being my husband, did not even know! They truly thought they were eating mashed potatoes. Now, the taste is obviously not the same, but I think the look fools them enough to not notice the taste difference. Good luck!
First of all, I LOVE my juicer and hope that (despite the cleaning process) you use it often. My kids love esp. watermelon, strawberry, apple, carrot and beet juice (just 1/2 a beet to keep the flavor subtle). And hiding veggies into "fun" foods that make eating interesting is always helpful. One idea is to puree a variety of veggies into pasta sauce and pour a circle of it onto a plate. Place spaghetti around it to look like hair, black olives for eyes, big meatball nose, and a cheese mouth. It's sure to get a few laughs and hopefully a few licks. Good luck!
You should purchase that book Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld there are wonderful recipes in that book that hide veggies into delicious foods that even my 11 yr old will eat.
i am also a working mother of 4 boys though...boys will be boys.i have a 4 yr old that eats very little of anything.he will not even touch veggies at all.what you do though is always put the veggies on his plate & one day more then likely he'll get curious & try the veggies out...thats what i was told to do & it worked on my 3 yr old...hopfully it helped you out! A. H.
Hi D.,
I've just started solid foods with my 5 1/2 month old daughter so I don't have any personal success stories to share but I think you're on the right track. The first thing I thought was she should try juicing some veggies in with fruit--looks like you're there!
One other tid-bit I plan to implement is "growing food". My girlfriend was so successful at getting her toddler son to eat veggies I was always in awe, and all she did was tell him he needed to eat his growing food to get big and strong. It's worth a shot!
I have blogged on this exact issue so many times because I, too, have an under-age-two son who won't eat his veggies. He loves pasta, so I bought spinach ravioli. He likes bread, so I made zucchini bread with tiny pieces of carrots added. I have even bought veggie burgers, though we are a meat-eating family! Try those Graduates veggie snacks, too. They're actually made with real vegetables. Finally, take heart. I've read that the servings per day that toddlers need is much less than what we think of a serving. Sneak in some veggies here and there, and give his vegetable juice (I like Juicy Juice's Harvest Surprise), and you'll be good! :) Hope this helps!
Have you heard of the book "Deceptively Delicious"? We got it as a gift and I just started trying some of the recipes. They are actually pretty good. The idea is that you puree vegetables (cauliflower, carrots, sweet potatoes, etc.) and fruits (avocado, berries, bananas) and sneak them into foods so that you don't even taste them. My first recipe was a banana bread that had hidden cauliflower and it was great. No hint of cauliflower taste but I knew my daughter was getting some good vitamins. I think this is a very common issue with toddlers!
Hi D. - You know that Jerry Seinfeld's wife just came out with a book that addresses exactly that - how to "hide" nutritious foods in foods that children will eat - like how to puree spinach and use it in a brownie recipe and things like that...My best friend tried it and says you cannot even tell there are veggies in these recipes...The book is called Deciptively Delicious and can be found here: http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/archive/2007/1...
Good luck!
N.
I love the juicer idea...thanks for the reminder. It is time to get mine out. We make a dip using non fat yogurt and the kids mind veggies less. Sometime we get on a dessert kick and I say if you don't have something green with dinner, no dessert. When I was really fet up with the complaining...I said green first and eat it while I am still cooking dinner. Another way to encourage them it to let them help prepare the veggies. Bit size is good for some too. Carrot dimes, cucumber quarters, etc. Oh-I heard of veggie tablets.
Hi-
While my boys like veggies so far my nephew is picky, so we hide lots!! I pack meatballs full of veggies (food process and then cook down before combining in mear) and they gobble them up. Of course, Deceptively Delicious is a good resource, but basically, you can puree any veggie and add it to anything!! Pureed sweet potatoes are great in mac and cheese and even applesauce muffins. Cauliflower can be hidden in anything, especially spaghetti sauce. And pureed spinach make HULK mashed potatoes very popular!! Good Luck and let me know if you need any further ideas!!
P.S. The juicer is fabulous!! Make a fun name (Superman Juice) for the concoctions and then they can't wait for their servings!! Apples make any juice taste great!!
If you have a food processor or chopper, try this: get a small bag of pre-washed baby spinach and about 1.5 cups baby carrots and process/chop until they are almost pureed (the carrots should be like little grains of rice or smaller) then add it to your spaghetti sauce. My kids LOVE it! They are always asking for seconds. The carrots make the sauce a bit sweeter and the spinach just looks like basil. My husbands prefers it this was too!
I strongly agree with Tina B. about the frozen vegetables. My mother has a tortoise that she feeds somewhat thawed frozen vegetables to. My son, who is now three, will eat and eat the "turtle food." He absolutely loves them partially frozen - anywhere from green beans, to peas, to carrots. It sounds crazy, but it works.
I've successfully hidden carrots and broccoli in rice pilaf. Chop it up really fine in the food processor and add it in with whatever other seasonings you use.
Sliced cucumbers with ranch dip was a favorite with my older son when he was a toddler.
Also, this is a bit embarassing to admit, but that same kid would not eat a vegetable that didn't come in a jar until he was about 2. He looooved Earth's Best veggies. I got to a point where I decided I didn't care as long as he was getting his nutrition, so I bought those little jars far longer than I thought I would.
My three year old wouldn't eat veggies so I found what she did like and I put them together. I let her dip her carrots, olives, broccoli, etc. in low fat ranch dressing and she loved it. I also got her to eat celery by putting peanut butter and raisins on it (bugs on a log). This might not work for all toddlers as my niece just licks all the good stuff off and leaves the veggies.
My saving grace for my kids is Juice Plus+!! It is 17 diferent fruits and veggies that are vine ripened, juiced on site into a powder. They remove most of the salt and sugar and they use a system that allows all the enzymes to survive. They put into a capsule, gummie or chewable. I really researched it before I put my kiddos on it and the published science on it was all I needed. You can check it ____@____.com We also juice, but this is so much easier and we are getting way more fruits and veggies in our diet without the salt and sugar you get from juicing. Some of the veggies are spinach, kale, cabbage and broccoli. Imagine that streaming through your kids day in and day out. My kids have been on it for almost 5 years now and we will take it forever!! They have never been so healthy! The only time my kids go to the MD is for their well visit. Their MD reccomends JP+ as well.
Hope this helps!
Feel free and call me if you have any questions.
L.
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Hi D.,
My 19 month old daughter will not eat vegetables sometimes, but will eat them at other times (like sweet peas). I have been making whole food smoothies for her in the Vitamix, and using an assortment of fruits AND vegetables, and she gulps them down! I have put carrots, celery and BROCCOLI, too, in with fruits like bananas, apples,oranges or peaches and frozen berries. It sounds gross, but you cannot detect the veges at all! It just tastes like a fresh fruit smoothie. I mix it with 100% fruit juice or milk or soymilk. She also enjoys using her own straw out of a plastic cup....pure health! :)
We turned a corner in eating vegetables when my first daughter was 2 . . . we took cooked broccoli and stood it up in rice so that it looked like trees then drizzled butter on the top. We made a big deal about eating trees and pretending to be dinosaurs and she ate it all up.
Also, making a pattern on the plate with say raw carrots and chicken taquitos (in a sunburst pattern) seems to work.
I've noticed if my husband and I talk about how much we enjoy a veggie and we are all eating it together--but not forcing the issue--then both my daughters will at least try what's on their plates.
Also, having a dip for the veggies has worked for us.
Dr. Praeger's Veggie Burgers(available at Trader Jo's) are lots of veggies and my toddler loves them!
A friend of mine had this problem, and she would make all her own baby food. She started putting chicken broth (made her own) in with blended or pureed veggies. As the baby got older she would still add a little of the chicken to flavor, and the kids now eat all their veggies. I hope my 7mo old doesn't have this problem, but I will try the chicken, or get the book everyone is talking about! Good luck!
Last night my older son ,21 and 2 friends were over for dinner. My kids have gotten in to a game of veggie races. We pick up a green bean or asparagus and count to one and we all see who can eat it the fastest, Survivor style...showing our tongue and the product donw the hatch at end. It was hialarious my 4 yr old must have eatin 20 beans...and the older boys couldn't get over how fast he could swallow one. I will work on table manners when we get a little bit older..I'm just thrilled my kids sit at the dinner table, eat what we eat, eat their veggies...and are great kids.
my 2 year old also loves meat and milk, and we dont try to hide the veggies, but i have worked on letting him choose to eat all his veggies for a reward of meat or milk. he doesnt get milk at dinner. he will just fill up and not care to eat. he gets meat, but just a small portion, and then i save bites for treats after veggie eating. there are some veggies he just doesnt like, and i respect that. but for the most part, with a little patience and some songs about his veggies, he is eating them and loving his glass of milk at the end of dinner.
