Getting kids to eat well, and especially eat their vegetables, is a challenge for many parents. To help familiarize your child with new vegetables, you should start early in the toddler period by offering a large variety of foods every day and making mealtime fun. How do you get children to eat more vegetables, especially when they may only want to eat hot dogs and French fries?
One of the most significant factors in your children eating vegetables is whether or not you eat them. What you eat has a tremendous influence on what your children will likely eat. If you rarely serve vegetables with meals, it should come as no surprise that your children don’t like them and aren’t used to eating them. Children’s food preferences are shaped in large part by what foods parents choose to make available to them. If children have repeated opportunities to sample new foods, the greater the likelihood will be they will come to like and accept them.
Don’t force your child to eat vegetables (or any other food for that matter). Encourage your child to try tastes of various vegetables and be patient if he or she resists it. Presented enough times, your child will eventually give in and try it so keep re-introducing new foods from time to time.
You might add vegetables to the foods that your children already like to eat. Put banana and zucchini in muffins and chopped broccoli and spinach on pizza. Add a handful of vegetables like cauliflower, carrots and celery to chicken soup, ramen noodles or marinara sauce. Chop tomatoes or grate carrots and add them to chicken or tuna salad.
There are other ways to help vegetables become more interesting and appealing to your child. One way is to simply make them more available. Put out a plate of carrots and celery with an applesauce, yogurt or peanut butter dip before mealtime or just after rigorous activity when your child is the hungriest. Keep a bowl of raw vegetables like pea pods and cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator for when children are likely to reach for a handy snack. Plant and tend a vegetable garden with your child or even plant a tomato plant in a bucket on your patio so your child can be part of the growth process.
Not all children are going to like every vegetable. That would be an unreasonable expectation even for most adults. Not every food is going to taste good upon first sampling. Framing vegetables in a positive light, however and patiently presenting foods repeatedly until they are finally accepted will help ease the struggle to get kids to eat what’s good for them.

While it’s natural to eat seasonally, it’s no surprise why we’ve departed from this way of eating. With supermarkets meeting the demand for all foods, at all times, produce is flown in from around the world. It’s difficult for our brains – let alone our senses – to know what’s in season.

“Canning and mass global distribution of produce have conditioned us to expect all foods year round,” Guiliano says. “I myself have been beguiled by the engineered good looks of off-season produce, but one taste of cardboard is enough to send me reaching for my napkin. Nothing is more flavorless than a supermarket tomato in winter, but a vine-ripened specimen in summer is…divine.”

“It’s so easy to be seduced by year-round produce at the supermarket,” says Deborah Madison, author of Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets. “But when you allow yourself to be seduced all the time, you’re choosing a shadow image of the real thing.”
To choose the real thing in every season, in the spring look for fresh lettuce, asparagus, blackberries, spinach, strawberries, peas, green onions and leeks. Summer offers a bevy of delicacies including tomatoes, plums, melon, green beans, apricots, corn, herbs and zucchini that are full of cool water and loaded with nutrients.
Autumn offers pumpkins, grapes, butternut squash, yams, apples, broccoli, cauliflower, pears, grapes, yams (and the beginning of seafood and oyster season, just when our bodies are starting to crave more protein). In winter beets, cabbage, carrots, onions, rutabagas, turnips and winter squash warm us up in hearty meals and soups. Citrus fruits are also in season and bolster our immune system to keep us healthy through the cold months.
Use an online search engine to research a seasonal food table for your region so you can become familiar with what is abundant –and delicious – in your area. Check in regularly with your local grocer to keep abreast of what’s in season and what’s at its peak. Talk to friends who garden about what they harvest during each season and what varieties of vegetables and fruit they recommend.
Eating seasonally not only provides the greatest possible sensual enjoyment of fruits and vegetables but it’s also a nutritionally rich experience that gives a natural balance to your physiological equilibrium.