Parents of picky eaters sometimes have to resort to trickery to get them to eat better. One “trick” that might encourage healthier appetites combines two techniques: enlisting kids’ help with the cooking and mixing a sweet or surprise ingredient into the dish.
Modelling healthy eating habits and a positive attitude towards food should form the basis of your strategy for teaching your kids to eat well. Making your children eat what you eat and providing variety are also important.
But when your kids refuse, yet again, to eat what you offer and you start to fear they’ll only eat chicken nuggets for the rest of their lives, you may be tempted to end the battle by smuggling healthy foods into dishes that they like, a la Jessica Seinfeld.
Perhaps you don’t have to hide the healthy ingredients, though. Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan at the kitchn discovered one night that you can encourage your children to eat if you have them add the healthy ingredient into the dish (e.g., an apple in squash soup)—making it an intriguing game. It might not work every time, but getting your kids involved in the kitchen and making cooking fun is definitely worth a try (perhaps before you resort to hiding zucchini in brownies). Photo by Chakravarthy.
The Apple Trick: On Not Tricking Kids into Eating Well [the kitchn]
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