If your toddler doesn’t eat fruits and veggies, he or she is not alone. Nearly all toddlers from ages 2 to 3 years are picky eaters. Any food that looks unfamiliar or unappealing is difficult for them to eat. Vegetables are usually the most common food items that toddlers avoid eating.
Parents always struggle to prepare healthy eating items for kids, but you cannot force them to eat. To handle the situation, try cooking your toddler’s favorite meals and sneak vegetables and other healthy food into them.
Sneaking Vegetables In Meals
Different parents have different opinions on sneaking vegetables into toddler meals. Some believe that instead of tricking them into eating something, they should explore the texture and flavors of vegetables. However, when your toddler doesn’t eat anything healthy for a whole day, it is very tempting to add some carrots into muffins or avocado into smoothies.
No doubt, it takes patience and consistency to make kids like vegetables. But once they start eating, their taste buds eventually accept them. Until then, you can try sneaking vegetables into your toddler’s meals. Here are some creative vegetable ideas to add to your toddlers’ food to ensure that they are getting enough nutrients in everyday meals.
The following 7 creative ways will help to sneak veggies into your toddler’s meal and offer them a variety of foods.
- Bake Vegetable Muffins And Cupcakes
Children cannot resist cupcakes and muffins. It is the easiest way to make your toddler eat veggies like zucchini and carrots in morning muffins, cupcakes, and other baked food items.
You can use these vegetables, and fruits like blueberries, raisins, and chocolate chips as a base for the cupcakes. When the vegetables are baked along with other fruits they will be hardly noticeable. Your toddler will happily eat their fiber-rich breakfast without even realizing that they are eating vegetables.
- Use Substitute Of Vegetables
You can use vegetables that are similar to your kid’s favorite fruits or veggies. For instance, if your child loves to eat mashed potatoes, you can try serving mashed cauliflowers for dinner. Most kids only focus on the color and consistency of food. So if they see something mashed and white they might assume it to be potatoes.
If you want to stay on the positive side you can mix mashed cauliflower with mashed potatoes. Before serving the meal, make sure it is blended well so the kids cannot realize that you have added a different vegetable to it. Mashed cauliflower can also be easily disguised in scrambled eggs.
- Add Vegetables In Hamburgers
Cooking food at home can be a fun activity for the whole family. If you are thinking of making hamburgers for dinner, you can sneak in some veggies too. Kids can easily eat ingredients like cheese, onions, and peppers in burgers.
You can also add some cabbage leaves to make them healthier. Finely cut spinach mixed with meat can also disguise well in your toddler hamburgers.
- Make Veg Noodles
Making veggie noodles is a time-consuming process, so you can make them on weekends. You can use a spiralizer or julienne tool to make noodles from vegetables. Some vegetables you can choose from are zucchini, asparagus, or squash.
As these vegetables are low on carbs and have higher nutritional value, they can fulfill toddler nutrition demands. If you make homemade noodles you can skip store-bought pasta, giving your toddler a healthier version of it. To make it even better, you can also add vegetables like tomatoes and mashed potatoes to pasta sauce.
- Make Vegetable Smoothies
There is hardly any toddler that doesn’t love smoothies. If your toddler is also one of them, you can sneak some vegetables into his or her smoothies. It is the most common and easiest way to add some vegetables to the meals of picky eaters.
Vegetables and fruits that are hardly noticeable in smoothies are avocadoes, cauliflower, and sweet potato. Leafy greens like spinach or kale can instantly turn the color of a smoothie making it bright green.
It can be alarming for toddlers. But you can serve it to toddlers, telling a story about a green monster or magical green lake and giving cute names to smoothies, like a green monster or green magic potion.
To overpower the taste of vegetables, add fruits and yogurt, or go for vegetables that cannot be easily detected.
- Add Vegetables In Pancakes
While preparing pancake batter, you can add some roasted and mashed potatoes or butternut squash into it. Butternut squash will also give a tempting orange color to pancakes and toddlers usually love bright-colored foods.
It is the best way to add some nutritional food using creative vegetable ideas for picky eaters. Eating veggies in breakfast pancakes will give a sufficient amount of nutrients to your toddlers.
When you serve their favorite fruits on the side of pancakes and pour delicious syrup over them, your toddler will finish the plate without knowing what’s hiding in their meal.
- Make Vegetable Puddings
Toddles love sweet and gooey chocolate, rice, or any other puddings. Puddings are one of the best dishes to sneak in vegetables. You just need to blend the veggies finely and your toddler will not get a hint of them.
You can use any pureed vegetable in puddings. To mask the strong flavor and color of veggies, you can add some cocoa powder, chocolate syrup, or vanilla essence to make it look more appealing.
In addition to vegetables, you can also add avocadoes. Although, avocado is not a vegetable, toddlers usually don’t like to eat it. Thus, you can sneak some mashed avocadoes or vegetables into your toddler’s favorite pudding.
Final Words
Vegetables are important to complete the daily requirement of toddler nutrition. But sometimes, it feels nearly impossible to make your kids eat veggies. You can use creative ways to sneak in any vegetable in toddler meals and desserts, to boost the nutritional value of food and promote healthy eating for kids.