Cookerati

We lucked out. Our son eats his fruits and vegetables and never fights with us about eating healthy. He loves fish, eats whole grain or wheat bread and doesn’t like melted cheese all over everything. I’ll stop there, I know there’s a lot of eye rolling going on. No kid is perfect, right? True – and believe me when I tell you ours has his kidzilla moments. When it comes to eating though, we’re pretty pleased.

Here are a few things we did which we believe helped our son develop good habits early on:

1. Get the  kids involved in the meal planning and food cooking process. My son has been helping me cook and bake since he was two. I read that kids who develop an early interest in food and how it works, and who help with the meals, are more likely to eat what’s on their plate. At first “Helping” was mixing or playing with some dough on his high chair or cutting out cookies, but soon he was mixing and rolling. Now, at 6, our son chooses Saturday’s dinner menu. He goes to the store, picks out the ingredients and helps with the cooking. He even goes to camp at the Children’s Chef Academy.

2. Introduce the good foods early on in life. Our son only ate white bread once, when he visitied an aunt who gave him bread and butter. All of his sandwiches have been made from wheat or whole grained bread and he’s never complained. At camp once a kid told him he has disgusting bread. My son shrugged his soldier and ate his cheese “sammich.” He enjoyed it, who cared what the other kid thought? Since this is what he always ate, it’s the other stuff that looks disgusting to him.

3. Fruit and veggies come first. We do have junk in the house. My husband likes chips and we have candy left over from Halloween, birthday parties and more. We don’t mind if our son has these, but there are ground rules.

• The first snack of the day has to be a fruit or veggie snack.
• Before eating candy, another fruit and veggie snack has to come first.
• After every piece of candy, teeth must be brushed.

Not only does this teach our son fruit and veggies are more important, but if he has fruit first he might not be hungry for junk. And by having to brush his teeth an additional time during the day it makes the candy too much work. We do have plenty of days where our son works hard for his candy though. Lordy does he want to work hard for his candy.

4. We let him pick his fruit. Every week we take our son to the supermarket or veggie mart and let him pick out the fruits he likes best. Sometimes he wants to try something he never tried before like a mango, apricot, kiwi or starfruit, other times he wants his favorite apples.

5. Everything is dippable. Celery goes well with peanut butter and carrot sticks are well accompanied by a cup of ranch dressing.  If we find something we don’t quite care for, we find a dip to go with.

I know lots of parents who like to smother broccoli and other veggies with melted cheese. We never had to do this – plus our son isn’t a fan of melted cheese at all. We do have to sneak veggies in sometimes like I’ll grind up carrots and put them in meatballs or spaghetti sauce and I put spinach in the lasagna. For snacks though, it’s usually an easy job to get our son to eat right.

Something that works for us is growing our own berries and veggies. My son enjoys helping with the gardening and loves to bring in ripened strawberries or tomatoes. This year we have one cherry tomato plant that is all his. He loves to snack on the fresh cherry tomatoes and we keep a basket of them on the counter. I’m not saying it will always be this easy for us, but we’re feeling pretty blessed right now.

I hope it lasts!