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Getting kids to eat healthier options can be a challenge for any parent, especially with the rising availability and variety of junk food around us.

Playeatgrow.com has come up with various strategies for addressing this problem; however, we’ve narrowed ten helpful ideas that you may also want to apply:

1. Be Their Model

A healthy lifestyle requires seeing great results. It’s difficult to have your kids inhibit healthy life choices when they have no role model to look up to.

Teaching and expecting them to eat healthy means that the same routine is found in you and in the rest of the household.

When you make choices, show them that something good comes from them, especially since that is what we tend to say to our children when they finish their vegetables.

Many kids during the pandemic have crossed the obesity marker mostly due to unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles.

If you want to address this with them, make sure that you are also a good example of living up to a healthier lifestyle.

2. Work With Their Palette

Instead of forcing kids to eat what they don’t like, learn which flavors work well with their palette and stir up those notes using healthier ingredients.

Do they love barbecue-flavored chips? Make some at home using an air fryer, potatoes, and barbecue sauce.

Air fryers are also healthier options to cook instead of deep fryers.

Do they love ranch dressing? Have them snack on some fresh baby carrots, sliced cucumbers, and other vegetables and fruits with interesting textures on the dressing.

“Healthy” doesn’t always have to equate to tasteless food.

Contrary to common understanding, most healthy ingredients, when harvested fresh, actually are tastier than processed food.

3. Engage Learning

If you explain to your children how each healthy food helps their body become stronger, they will be more likely to understand why they should eat nutritious food.

Balance this with information about junk food to give them a bigger picture.

Which food group is naturally rich in Vitamin A?

What is Vitamin A for? What about processed food that is enriched with Vitamin A?

How is the process of injecting vitamins back into non-nutritious food harmful?

Be informative and let them make their own wiser decisions.

4. Reward Good Choices

It is so easy to let your kids choose healthier food if you can break the box of the usual fearful warnings that they simply need to eat their veggies.

Instead of punishing them by not letting them leave the table for not eating their greens, positively reinforce their wise decisions when they do decide to eat healthily.

This means you need to watch out for their good deeds. Did they go under the sun for a quick playtime in the yard?

Give them some ice-cold lemonade and congratulate them for getting healthy sun exposure and some mobility.

Treat them to ice cream after dinner when they’ve finished their salad.

Be on the lookout for decisions that they make which are leading to a healthier lifestyle.

5. Be Logical

When you tell your kids to eat their fruits and vegetables simply because it is healthy, this might not always translate to their logic.

Work with how they understand what is good and bad for them and use stories to translate what healthy means.

You can also help them understand how the human body works in everyday scenarios through the stories you use to explain this.

6. Encourage Balance

A balanced diet is the main goal. You’re getting your children to understand this in the same way that you will approach their eating habits through this.

If they eat enough carbohydrates, greens, protein, and the right amount of sugar in a day, then there’s nothing much to worry about.

At the end of the day, too much of anything can be bad, so you need to just work with balance.

Surprisingly, nutritionists can attest to the fact that children’s appetites are actually innately controlled.

This is why you shouldn’t force them to eat more when they say they can’t anymore, nor should you deprive them when they say they’re hungry.

You merely need to schedule a consistent eating time and a healthy serving size that works well with your own body’s meter.

7. Cook With Them

The best way to approach healthy eating is to let your kids be involved in cooking and preparing meals.

This can be a fun activity as you gear up using creative, kid-friendly tools in the kitchen while they understand each ingredient’s role in making the meal happen.

8. Be Opportunistic

A new yogurt parlor opened up? Take them there to introduce a healthier choice of dessert.

Are there baked kale chips on the grocery shelves for munching? Purchase one instead of the deep-fried potato skins.

Be on the lookout for opportunities that pique their curiosity to experience a healthy diet.

9. Research Alternatives

Similar to checking what opportunities there are currently in terms of ready-to-eat food, research other ways to prepare food at home using vegetables and fruits that they might not like.

If they don’t like the texture of one, you can probably cook it in a different way that changes the texture.

They don’t like squash because it’s hard to chew?

Put them in a food processor and stir up some good ol’ cream of squash.

Research alternative ways to approach the ingredients and get them to enjoy nutritious food as actual delicious dishes.

10. Do Groceries With Them

Finally, let them be involved in the buying of the goods.

You get to plan what you’ll be having for the next few days and be in agreement with them that these are the meals you’ll be preparing together.

This ticks off any unnecessary food deliveries that are most likely junk compared to a home-cooked meal.

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-eating-biscuit-and-milk-3965530/