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It's an age old battle, one I remember fighting with my parents all too well. You want your children to have a healthy diet and to do this they need to eat vegetables, they think vegetables are gross. You will find a will of absolute stone when you try saying-"You are going to stay at the table until you eat your vegetables"! Trust me if my mom hadn't finally given up I would still be sitting there forty years later, there was NO way I was going to eat those nasty brussell sprouts. The battle hasn't changed but we are learning to outsmart our kids and getting them to eat those vegetables and better yet to love them. Good thing too, because the dog still won't eat spinach!

Think of creative and fun ways to serve your kids vegetables, serve them on a skewer with some great tasting dips, make a funny face salad with different vegetables for the facial features and hair. Make a vegetable party tray and set it on the table before dinner since that's the time your kids are always underfoot and "starving to death" before you know it all the vegetables are gone.
Steam vegetables and puree them in your blender or food processor, mix the vegetable puree with a stronger tasting food to cover the taste. A great example of this is mixing cauliflower puree into one of their favorite meals-mac and cheese, they'll never know you snuck those vegetables in. You can even hide zucchini in chocolate cake or brownies. Just make sure the kids don't see you because no matter how fantastic the dish tastes if they see the vegetables going in you'll have a battle going on.
If you are trying to introduce a new vegetable to your kids never do it beside one of their favorite foods. If you try to give your child spinach along with fish sticks and french fries they will eat the food they like and leave the vegetables. Instead serve a new vegetable with a so-so dinner and make sure your child is extra hungry.
As with so many things our children fight with us about, stop begging and insisting they eat those vegetables, the less you show them you care either way about it the more likely they are to at least try those good for them, healthy vegetables. Don't forget though that the earlier you start trying to introduce your children to vegetables the easier it will be. After all at a young age they really don't know about everyone else's opinion of spinach, they may think it's the greatest thing they ever tasted if no one tells them the truth!

Learn more about this author, Kimberlee King.
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