The Fruit and Vegetable Diet for Kids

How to Make it Fun and Delicious!

It has been the diet for kids that every parent has struggled with. Fruit and vegetables are the foods that we should be eating the biggest quantity of yet we avoid them like the plague!

Part of organizing a lifestyle of family fitness and health is to ensure everyone is eating the right things. And a lifestyle of family fitness and health is something we do every day of our lives rather than diets and cleansing programs one off and every now and then. Sometimes those sorts of diets can cause more health problems because the body puts on more fat after the diet and it becomes harder and harder to work naturally to stay healthy.

So starting young is the key. But how do we make a diet for kids happen and get the kids to develop good eating habits and LIKE their fruit and vegetables?


Get Your Children Involved. Involved in growing their own vegies or helping to prepare food at meal times. It may be more effort for you initially but you are teaching them a lifestyle of healthy eating habits including the principle of helping the family function.

When kids get involved in helping with food preparation and clean up and also in the garden, there is less of that spoilt attitude expecting everything to be done for them. Check out the Organize Your Garden section on how to set up your vegetable patch and easy vegetables to grow. As children help, they are also keener try this new diet for kids.

Offer a variety. The earlier you start expecting your children to eat what is on their plate the easier it is to have them eating a wide range of fruit and vegetables. It’s also important to not offer sweet food options if the main meal has not been eaten. Otherwise they will develop the habit of delaying eating the healthy food knowing eventually they will be able to fill up on the sweet stuff.

I also avoid giving my babies sugary foods and drinks for as long as possible (well meaning relatives and friends are often the ones to break them into this sweet diet!). This helps them develop a good taste for fruit and vegetables without craving for that extra sweetness or saltiness found in junk food. My son is 2 ½ and will actually choose carrot sticks off a platter over chips (he will get to the chips) but he will eat the vegetables because he has developed a taste for them and enjoys eating them.

Many of the mid morning and afternoon snacks I offer are just different types of fruit and vegetable platter. I don’t even buy some of the other snacks because they are too easy to fall back on when you’re tired and don’t feel like chopping up food. Check out the Organized Family Recipe’s section for delicious healthy snack ideas for at home or at school.

Model it Yourself. This is probably the most important. I can’t believe how many times my 1 year old will get fed her dinner at 5pm only to want what is on my plate at 6pm. Kids want to eat what you eat so be careful what you eat! It’s better not to ask children what they want to eat because they don’t know yet what the best choice is. That is why they need you as the parent to decide the diet for kids. If you start to let them have choices, it won’t be long and they will be asking for things you don’t want to give them and in public places (like supermarkets!).

So develop the pattern that your children don’t ask for what they want or choose the food they eat but always eat what they are given and they can see it being eaten by others around them too. We always had a rule in our house growing up that we had to at least try something that we thought was disgusting. If you had three bitter brussell sprouts on your plate, you had to at least try them and eat one.

Little Hints…

- Sneak vegetables into rissoles, casseroles, pasta sauces, soups

- Experiment with stir-frying, steaming and roasting for best results

- Make the vegetables taste better by adding grated cheese, herbs, garlic, sweet chilli sauce or soy sauce to cooked vegetables.

- Let kids add mayonnaise or tomato sauce

- Combine sweet vege’s like carrots, peas, pumpkin or sweet potato or fruit (mango, peach, pear) with stronger flavoured vege’s

- Add a sprinkling of sugar on tomatoes, honey on baked carrots or butter on corn or asparagus

This area of developing good eating habits requires persistence and diligence. But don’t give up because a good diet for kids now will possibly save your children from that frustrating cycle of dieting and weight gain later on. Just watch the amount of sugary additives you use because sugars become fats in your body.

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