Vegetables are rich in vitamins and minerals and are an indispensable food for humans. However, some children dislike vegetables or certain types of vegetables. What should parents do? In addition to helping children understand the importance of eating vegetables, parents can also adopt some techniques to consciously guide children to eat vegetables regularly.
One, Vary the Shapes of Vegetables
When cutting vegetables, try to make them as distinctive and appealing as possible for your child, and avoid always using the same old cubes or strips. For example, when cutting carrots, you could slice them into rounds like wheels; when cutting winter melon, you could cut it into various shapes like triangles, trapezoids, squares, or hexagons; when cooking green vegetables, you could leave the leaves whole and cut the stalks into three or four connected strips, like the legs of an octopus. Children are particularly sensitive to shapes, and when vegetables are varied and visually appealing, it can greatly stimulate their appetite.
Two, Use Vibrant Color Combinations
From red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, to violet, the colors of vegetables are incredibly rich. When cooking, you should fully consider the colors of the vegetables and try to create vibrant combinations that are eye-catching and make the food truly look as good as it tastes. For instance, dice white radish and stir-fry it with green peas, tender yellow corn, and black fungus. The four distinct colors might make a child's mouth water. Another example is a soup made with tofu, loofah, and tomatoes, which also looks very beautiful. Color, aroma, and taste are important standards for judging a dish, with color being the most crucial. The color of a dish plays a significant role in stimulating appetite. If every dish is a dull, unappetizing color, even if the flavor is perfect, a child might not like it. For children, an appealing appearance is often more important than delicious taste.
Three, Strategically Arrange the Order of Serving
When children come home from kindergarten or school, they are often hungry and may even clamor for an early dinner. This is the perfect opportunity to guide them toward eating vegetables. The order in which dishes are served is a science. If you have prepared several dishes, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, it's a good idea to serve the vegetables first. As the saying goes, "hunger is the best sauce." When a child is hungry, they won't be so picky. Seeing the fresh and tempting vegetables, they will naturally eat them. After the child has eaten some vegetables, then you can bring out the meat dishes. If you do it the other way around—serving the chicken, duck, fish, or meat first—the child will fill up on those and lose their sense of hunger. By the time you bring out the vegetables, even if they taste wonderful, the child won't want to eat anymore. When the family eats at a restaurant, you can also ask the waiter to serve the vegetable dishes first.
Four, Cultivate the Habit of Eating Vegetables from a Young Age
To get children to like vegetables, just like cultivating other interests and habits, you should "start from a young age." Parents should introduce vegetables to their children early on to prevent them from becoming averse to them later. From infancy, you should appropriately add some vegetables as supplementary food. At the beginning, you can give your child vegetable juice or water boiled from vegetables, such as tomato juice, cucumber juice, carrot juice, or water from green leafy vegetables. Then, you can introduce vegetable purees. When the child is approaching their first birthday, you can give them tender sprouts and finely chopped vegetables. You can mince various vegetables and mix them into congee or noodles to feed the child. If a child develops a connection with vegetables from a young age, they will naturally develop an affinity for them as they grow older.
Five, Mix Meat and Vegetables in Cooking
Mixing meat and vegetables in cooking is a way to gradually get children to like vegetables. For example, you can cook winter melon with meat, but cut the melon into small pieces; if the pieces are too large, the child might find it difficult to eat. Another example is stewing chicken or pork ribs with radish. Try to make it very tender so the flavors of the meat and broth blend together. When making dumplings or buns with fillings, you can use a mixed meat-and-vegetable filling. Finely chop vegetables like melon and mix them with minced meat and eggs. These filled foods are easy for children to chew, swallow, and digest, and they are delicious and nutritious. For children who dislike vegetables, you can often give them these filled foods to gradually guide them into getting used to and liking vegetables.
Six, Give Vegetables Appealing Names
Giving a cooked vegetable dish a catchy and child-friendly name can also enhance a child's fondness for it and stimulate their appetite. For example, a soup made with small tomatoes (quail egg-sized, also called情人果 or "love fruit") and green vegetables could be named "Sunrise Over the Sea" or "The Rising Sun." Stir-fried spinach with black fungus could be called "Spinach-Black Talks." Stir-frying green and red peppers together could be named "The Peerless Pair." Scrambled eggs with tomatoes could be called "Red Face, Yellow Face." With a little creativity, you can surely come up with appealing names. Good-sounding names not only increase a child's appetite for vegetables but can also enrich their knowledge. Sometimes, you can let the child name the dish themselves. When their name for the dish is praised, they will surely grow to like that dish.
Additionally, respect the child's preference for how they eat vegetables. Some children don't like cooked vegetables that are stir-fried or stewed, but prefer to eat some vegetables raw, such as tomatoes, water radishes, or cucumbers. You can allow them to eat them raw or make them into cold salads. Of course, to help increase the child's intake and variety of vegetables, parents should also eat more vegetables themselves to set a good example.