Do you struggle to feed your picky eaters? If you have one or more kids at home who are very particular about the foods they will or won’t eat, you may want to change your cooking and mealtime strategies. Although you can still ensure that your kids get all the nutrients they need by providing them with nutritional supplements such as children’s multivitamins, Wellements probiotics drops, and so on, the best way to make sure your little ones stay healthy as they’re growing is to give them a balanced diet. If your picky children make it tough to feed them the well-rounded diet they need, there are several cooking strategies and child-friendly recipes that can help you turn things around.
Strategies To Prepare Food For Your Picky Eater
Before you can address your child’s picky eating, it may be helpful to figure out the root cause of his or her pickiness. Although for many children, picky eating is just a temporary phase, it could be due to a variety of reasons, including:
- Food allergies
- Stubbornness due to the child’s current developmental phase
- Bad associations with certain foods
- Varying tastes and food preferences
Thankfully, you can adopt a few clever strategies to prepare foods for your kids and introduce them in an effective way. Make sure to:
- Slowly introduce one new food at a time or shift slowly from one food your child is familiar with, such as organic elderberry for babies, to one they’re not yet familiar with, such as a fruit smoothie
- Require your children to at least try new foods or foods they claim they don’t like
- Introduce new dishes as an exciting adventure and talk about the flavors of each food
- Lead by example by eating a healthy and varied diet in front of your children
- Schedule family meal time for the same time every evening
- Stay calm and avoid becoming visibly frustrated with your kids when they refuse certain foods
Try Child-Friendly Ingredients and Recipes
Whether your child has suffered from acid reflux in the past or whether you’ve experienced low iron in babies, you likely already know about the healing powers of healthy food. If your child is willing to try new dishes but tends to dislike overtly healthy foods, you can stealthily feed your little one healthy ingredients by trying some cleverly adapted recipes. For instance, you could cook up:
- Tacos filled with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and low-fat sour cream
- Burgers made with lean meat and topped with veggies
- Casseroles packed with sweet potatoes, broccoli, and low-fat cheese
- Minestrone soup with shell pasta, beans, wild rice, and wilted spinach
- Oven-fried chicken and baked French fries, rather than deep-fried chicken and fries
- Oven-baked treats such as baked chickpeas, kale chips, and cinnamon apple slices
Unfortunately for parents, it’s relatively common for young children to go through picky eating phases. The good news, however, is that you may be able to get your own picky eaters to try new foods and consume a well-rounded diet by changing your general approach to mealtime and your strategies for child-friendly cooking.
