Lunch-Fruit/Veggie plate
I don’t know about you but some days I have a hard time getting my toddlers to want to eat healthy. But I heard something a few months ago that really made sense. If your goal is to train your children to eat healthy and you deck the table out with the best veggies and fruits, and also set the table with Chips, cookies and candy, do you think your children are going to make “healthy choices”? Probably not. They have fleshly desires just like we do, and will go after the foods that are calling out to their taste buds. If we offer them the things that are good for them and then make them look more appealing the chances are great that our children will learn to love those things which are good for them.
I think one of my biggest hurdles was finding the time to cut up and prepare all these wonderful things, it was easier to just put together two peanut butter sandwiches and watch them devour them, then I got to sit down and eat something with them at least. Then the other day I figured it out. The plate you see above was actually prepared for me, the kids ate it in courses. I just grabbed whatever I had in the fridge, one orange, one apple, half an avocado, bag of baby carrots and a couple of raw granola bars. I took all the food to the table, a knife, a cutting board and sat the kids down and I started cutting things up. The boys never used to like oranges which was beyond me because they love orange juice, but when I cut them up like you see in the picture and forced encouraged them to try one, low and behold they love oranges now! I usually start with something I know they will enjoy to avoid whining from hungry children, then I go to something I know they aren’t very fond of and I actually make my kids try it. My theory is that if I push my kids to try things they don’t like that they will begin to develop a taste for those things. All the while I am encouraging them in the Lord, talking how we will build character and strong muscles when we eat things that are good for us even when we might not like them, I also encourage them that one day if they continue to eat them, they will actually like them! And this is Aidan’s favorite, I tell him how one day he will be married to a woman and she will cook for him and he needs to learn how to like everything now so that he will be a good husband and appreciate what she cooks for him when he’s married. And to be honest, this I really believe encourages him more than the others! And then there is the last resort of consequences when the children disobey our instructions.
I don’t do this everyday, I do still give them PB&J sandwiches sometimes, or healthy crackers, meat and cheese but I try to always add a few carrots or peas to the side of the plate and ask them to eat at least a couple of them. Here is what I’ve been doing lately…
Costco has great bulk fruits and veggies, I pick a few each week and we eat them until we are sick of them and then go to another one. For instance, last week we had grapes and oranges and apples almost every day. This week I bought a pineapple, a box of strawberries and a tub of mushrooms to go along with the little bit of produce I had from last week. We will eat all that and then next week we will try something new, they have enough options that you can do this and then be ready for apples and oranges by the time you get through them, your kids wont get sick of the same thing everyday and neither will you. And through the weeks of trying new fruits and veggies my kids will begin to develop a taste for more healthy foods. Sometimes a little ranch helps but you don’t want to do too much because they will develop a taste for ranch dressing!
I think that’s about it for now, my brain is tired and I think I should take a little nap while the kids are all sleeping. More on what I fix for myself, my baby and my husband later.
