5 Easy Strategies to Encourage Healthy Eating Habits in Kids

Food is at the foundation of good health! I believe that setting your children up with good eating habits is a gift that will last them a lifetime. Thankfully, my kids have turned out to be pretty good eaters (so far). Here are some things I have done to help foster good eating habits:

1. Monkey See Monkey Do - If you want your child to eat healthy foods, you need to as well! You cannot get around this. If they see you snacking on junk, they are going to ask for some too. If they see you eating whole foods, they are going to be more likely to try them. Click on this blog post to learn more about how we do food in our home and for meal ideas! The Food Babe's Family Cookbook is a good place to start with whole foods recipes that everyone will like!

2. Let Kids Help - Let your kids help in the kitchen from a very early age. It has never failed - if my kids help in the cooking process, they will eat it! If you have a toddler, set them up at the counter and let them help with measuring, cutting, peeling, etc. A kitchen helper stand and kids knife set are two MUST-HAVES for little ones!

   
   

   

   
   

3. Expose Foods Multiple Times & Get Messy - It can take up to twenty exposers to a food before a kid will eat it! If they don't eat or like it the first time, keep offering it! Food can be an overwhelming sensory experience - let them play with their food to feel it and smell it before they taste it. Yes, it gets messy, especially in the baby and toddler years, but trust met, its worth it!

4. Out of Site, Out of Mind - If you offer kids junk food, they are most likely not going to gravitate towards the healthy food. In our house, junk food is not even an option so the only option is to eat the healthy food offered, or not eat at all.

5. Teach the Why - Kids will eventually grown up and have to make their own food choices, so teaching them why we eat certain foods and why we do not eat others is giving them tools to make wise choices. The way I have explained it to my 5 and 3 year old is that we have "Go Foods" - the foods that are designed to give your body energy and help it grow strong and healthy, and we have "Slow Foods" - these are foods that will slow us down and if we eat too much of them, will make us sick. For older kids, you can give a more age appropriate explanation.

A bonus tip.. MAKE FOOD FUN! Make your own popsicles, cut out fruit and veggies into shapes, make food art, and make your own gummies.

If you try all of these tips and find that you still have a very picky eater, something deeper could be going on like a sensory processing issues, a severe nutritional deficiency, or possibly something else. Please contact a medical provider and seek evaluation. Keep digging for answers and don't give up!

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