My Son Wont Eat Hardly Any Fruits or Veggies.

Though it is not the best idea to get them to learn that veggies are yummy, there is a great book called "Deceptively Delicious" that has recipes to get the veggies into everyday food that you eat. At least then you know they are eating the veggies, and, maybe when he is older you can show him how he had been eating it all along and he can try it in its normal form.

http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com/site/

Hi B.,

Fruits and veggies are sometimes hard to eat for little guys, they can be too tough or have a "weird" taste. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Have your son help you choose the foods at the store
2) Grow your own veggies at home and let him pick them
3) Put veggies & Fruit on his plate at every meal, and encourage, but not force him to eat them.
4) When he eats/ tries new foods, praise praise, praise.

Do not punish over food, it will become a power struggle. If you find he won't eat veggies at all, try adding them to cake/ bread batter. It's not ideal, but it's one way to get veggies.

R. Magby

B.-
What is he seeing modeled at home? Do you and others all eat your fruits and veggies? It sounds a bit like a texture issue, rather than flavor issue. Who doesn't love the flavor of most fruits? I would minimize all the other sugar in his diet; cereals, juice, soda, cookies, cakes, ice cream, etc. so that fruits are his sole source of sweets. As for veggies, bake them into healthy muffins (zucchini, pumpkin), add them to pizza, make spaghetti with lots of homemade tomato sauce. I used to add a can of drained diced tomatos to mac'n'cheese. You can always drain and puree the tomatos and add them. Let the liquid cook off for the right texture. Maybe he needs to have raw veggies (I'm not a cooked veggie person much myself). Give him bite size pieces and "dipping sauce" and see if he likes that. He is almost two, I would try moving him away from the baby food textures toward adult food (or big boy food). This might make things easier in the future.

Best of luck,
S.

My son only liked bananas too- and what cracks me up as I read this is the memories I have of that time of his life- when we visited our relatives they made this mixed fruit bowl for him(they thought I was limiting him to bananas) and he made me pick out the bananas and refused to eat anything else. NOW... here is where we are today(without anything but constantly re-introducing different fruits and veggies). Have you tried mangos? He also loved mangos- similar soft texture.

Our kids are fruit and veggie lovers- and I will just share a few thoughts based on our experiences. They like fresh or canned fruit, not frozen fruit. I think the freezing process changes the texture or flavor and they do not enjoy it. We serve it in bowls/plates that are very kid friendly(from Target) with aliens or princesses on them.

Our almost 2 year old daughter is a "challenging" eater- and it is stressful! She likes to eat off of anyone else's plate but her own. We will all have the same exact thing but she wants whatever someone else has, so I feed her my dinner and end up eating hers.

I would recommend the Deceptively Delicious book as I see another mom did, also there is another book called The Sneaky Chef that does the same thing. I like them both, have favorites in each. If you didn't want to buy them, you can check them out at the library. If he eats yogurt you could try something I used to do when my kids were little: instead of feeding them the store bought flavors (like Yoplait, etc.) which are full of sugar, I would make plain yogurt or buy plain yogurt and then mix in an organic baby food fruit. Would he drink a smoothie? You could blend up some fruit with yogurt and ice, or orange juice and tell him its an "ice cream drink". Start out slow, if he likes bananas...make it with almost all bananas the first time and then gradually add other fruits. There are smoothie recipes in the Sneaky Chef book. Also, that one has ways to make Jello with fruit purees. She also has a recipe where you hide spinach juice in chocolate pudding, I was skeptical at first...you absolutely cannot tell its in there. Obviously, that was a special treat, we didn't want to be eating pudding every day. You can hide veggies in lots of things...meatloaf, breakfast breads and muffins, mac and cheese, etc. Good luck to you! Hope you find at least a few ideas that work!

i was just about to tell you about that book that was just mentioned, its fantastic!

the author has another one too, about tricking your husband into eating good stuff too, gotta love it

my oldest did that he will outgrow it.

There are a lot of good answers by others(but I am not much of a cook and my husband would not be happy if i were sneaking veggies to him). My kids really like the V8 fusion juice with fruits and veggies, they have the light kind too now, so not so many calories my kids LOVE this. My kids go through fazes off and on and there are limited veggies they will eat, but the more I give them to them and I make them at least try them, the more they eat of all veggies. Also my youngest son loves carrot sticks with light ranch, and cucumbers. My oldest loves tomatoes, the cherry ones so I try to always have those on hand and serve them every chance i get. He will grow out of it as he gets older.

There are several cookbooks out - one by Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry's wife) - with recipes written specifically for "hiding" veggies and fruit.

Also, as my mother-in-law says ; "if he gets hungry enougn, he'll eat". Don't offer snacks or cookies, etc. unless some fresh fruit or veggies are eaten.

Good Luck!

just keep offering and hoping. don't worry. some kids have to see it about 100 times before they will try. My youngest waited until he went to camp to try anything.

do you give him a good multivitamin? I can recommend a great one.

Check out the book The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine. It has some great recipes, tips and suggestions for ways to hide veggies and get extra protein in kids foods. She uses veggies that leave no discernible taste and won't change the texture when you add them into things like spaghetti sauce, mac n cheese, etc. I got my copy on bookamillion.com for around $5.

I would use some of her recipes along with offering fruits and/or veggies with every meal. That way he's getting them snuck in his regular foods and he also sees them on his plate at every meal. My kids get fruit with breakfast and usually one snack and they get veggies with lunch and dinner. Sometimes they eat all of them, sometimes not so much but they are there every meal.

Have you tried giving him salsa with tortilla chips? My son does not like veggies at all but he loves salsa.