Nov 19, 09 | Posted by: Sharyl Paley, M.D.

How to get your kid to be a healthy eater

I was so happy the other day when an 8 year old that I was examining said, ” I eat a fruit or vegetable with every meal that I eat, Dr. Paley.”  That means that she listened last year at her check up when we had that conversation.  The biggest thing I hear from the 5- 12 year olds is that they don’t like to eat fruits and vegetables.  Now this isn’t all kids in this age group, but it is over half of them, especially when it comes to vegetables.  For those of you with younger kids reading this, start young.  Make sure you are offering fruits and vegetables at every meal so that it is just part of their lifestyle.  For those of you with kids in this age group and kids that don’t like fruits and veggies, keep reading.

I start slow.  It can be overwhelming when you think about children need 5-11 servings of fruits and vegetables in a day.  I start with asking them to make sure to get one serving at every meal.  That is a lot for most kids, but look depending on serving size that may even be only 3 servings.  Once they are doing that I ask them to have both a fruit and vegetable at dinner or lunch and I keep building on this.  The goal is not to get them to the 5-11 servings immediately, but teach them healthy eating for the rest of their lives.

Experiment with different ways of offering.  Try a yogurt smoothie and put different fruits in there.  Start with it very smooth and eventually get to where it is chunky.  Let them have a banana sundae.  Bananas drizzled with chocolate syrup and sprinkles.  Is it ideal? NO.  But it is a way to get them to eat something they don’t like with something that they do like.  Let them dip their vegetables in yogurt, dressing, or like my daughter does ketchup.  She loves vegetables plain, but will also dip her cauliflower and broccoli into ketchup.

If they are really picky, put one- yes only one- vegetable in their pasta, rice etc.

Finally, visit mypyramid.gov.  It is a great website that goes over serving sizes for kids and games for various ages.  Check it out and let them see how many servings they are doing a day. 

If you have any great ideas or recipes, let us know and we will post them.

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