How to Introduce your Kids to Healthy Food

(Taken from The Local Harvest 2007. View this article as a PDF.)

By Sharon Way Brackenbury

Kids are notoriously picky eaters and for many parents getting them to eat healthy can feel like an uphill battle. This problem is accentuated by the disconnect in our lives between the food we eat and the way it is grown. We buy food, rather than grow it.

We are our child’s first teacher in healthy behaviours and one of the first lessons begins with a healthy relationship toward food.  We need to teach them to stick their hands in the soil – even if only in a window box – and begin to think about the nutrients that foods supply to our minds and bodies. Children have a natural, innate sense of spirit and working the soil in some form reconnects them with the basics of life. Teach them early on, and they will embrace a deep respect for their food and where it comes from as well as continuing their nutritious eating habits for the rest of their lives. Here are some steps:

Teach: First and foremost, talk to your kids and teach them that eating healthy will help them to “grow up and be strong.” Just like talks about drugs or smoking, if they know why they should do things a certain way and how it could benefit them, they are much more likely to listen. With my own children, at a very young age, we always talked about eating our “growing food” and discussed about how each type of food helped us to grow. For example, carrots help our eyesight or for an older child the beta carotene in carrots coverts to vitamin A in the body and helps our eyes see better at night.

Variety: Your child’s palette truly is a tabula rasa, a clean slate, so expose them to a variety of tastes and flavours. If they’ve been eating lots of unhealthy foods and snacks until now, ease them into their new eating habits. For the first few weeks, allow them to continue eating a few of their favourite foods, but mix in something nutritious with the same meal. Just mixing fresh veggies into their pasta sauce at dinner will help to widen their palette and develop tastes for new foods.

Tastes Change: As a child, and even into adulthood, our tastes and flavour preferences can change dramatically. So, just because your child despises the taste of broccoli now, he or she could develop a taste for it later on. If there’s a specific healthy food your child refuses to eat, reintroduce it in new ways every few weeks. In the case of broccoli, for example, try mixing it in with a salad or chicken wrap to overcome the “yuck broccoli” stereotype. How many adults can honestly say they enjoyed eating blue cheese as a child?

Setting the stage: Children often possess an excitement for things that adults view as drudgery. Meal preparation and planning can feel a lot less tedious when we have the excitement of a child around. Take time to make meals a special event – set out a candle, put on some music, involve your child in chopping and mixing the food. If we take time to put some love and enjoyment into our preparation of the food it will surprisingly taste much better. I’ll never forget my six-year-old eating twice as much salad as normal, just because she helped make it and had fun doing it.

Making them a part of the process by eating locally: Allow children the chance to shop for their own food at local markets, grow their own food, and to meet the farmer that helped bring the food to their table. This is a powerful learning tool in teaching kids the importance of eating healthy. Kids are more likely to enjoy eating healthy food if they have had some input and understanding of where it has come from and have helped to grow it.

Happy eating, sharing and growing!

Sharon Way Brackenbury is an educator, doula, and mother to three children who all eat their vegetables and are rooted in eating locally.