Eating Veggies Won’t Save Your Child’s Health, But Here’s What Can Help
Photo courtesy of Third Strand Photography
Does your child have a hard time eating vegetables?
Does your child frown upon anything remotely green in color that touches her plate?
If your kids don’t like eating their veggies, they are 100% completely normal!
I recognize how kids not liking or wanting to eat vegetables can bring up tremendous stress and anxiety for parents.
Many parents I work with around this will ask me what it means for their children’s health if they don’t like eating vegetables.
Does this mean they’ll become unhealthy? Or have a poor immune system? Have stunted growth? Or be more susceptible to unhealthy eating behaviors over the long-term?
All these questions are understandable, considering how much emphasis diet culture puts on eating the “right” foods in order to be healthy.
We hear and see these messages everywhere:
“Just eat superfoods like kale and spinach, and you’ll be healthy!”
“Make sure half of your plate is vegetables so you can cut calories and eat less of the foods that aren’t good for you.”
“All the best nutrients for your body are in vegetables, so make sure you’re eating them regularly.”
These messages are also regularly promoted as part of our “wellness” and diet culture. This idea that eating vegetables is the cure-all, end-all way of ending all ailments and health conditions is widely promoted but absolutely absurd.
On the surface, these messages may be well-intentioned. But these unrealistic standards of health and eating trickle down into the way we approach feeding with our kids.
Here’s the thing: Eating vegetables is not going to save your child’s health.
You may feel that it’s critical for your child to eat vegetables at every meal, or to eat as much produce as possible.
You might feel that it’s important for your kids to eat as many different vegetables as possible in order for them to become a more adventurous eater.
While these things in themselves are not inherently “bad”, when we make these the goals of feeding our kids, we are missing the mark of what it means to feed and raise a healthy eater.
Diet culture has infiltrated child feeding and what it means to raise a healthy eater.
Many parents set out with the goals of raising kids who will happily eat whatever vegetables that are put in front of them or turn their noses up toward sugar and other processed foods.
But this is not what makes up a healthy eater - neither in the short-term or the long-term.
When we hold these expectations to our children, we actually are making eating MUCH harder, for them, and for us.
The reality is that most kids will have a harder time eating vegetables.
Most kids will prefer eating carbohydrate foods that are beige and starchy because those are safe and comfortable.
This is natural and expected and it doesn’t make you a failure as a parent; nor does it mean that you’re going to raise an unhealthy child. Reshaping our expectations for how our kids eat is critical for raising a healthy eater.
At the end of the day, do you want to know what is MORE impactful for your child’s overall physical and mental health?
I’ll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with kale, green vegetables, or eating the rainbow.
What matters most for raising a body confident and healthy children is building a trusting feeding relationship and supporting them in becoming competent eaters.
Why is this important?
We have to keep the big picture goals in mind to help them not only grow into healthy adults but to have a positive relationship with food and their bodies, decreasing risk of disordered eating and eating disorders over the long-term.
Dangers of Unrealistic Feeding Expectations
Again, wanting your kid to eat a wider variety of foods or enjoy vegetables is not a bad thing in itself.
But again, when this becomes the overall goal of how we feed our kids, this is where the danger can lie.
If you’re worried about how your child is eating or what your child is eating, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture of what’s happening.
Instead of asking, “How can I get my child to eat more vegetables?”, more important questions to ask might be:
“Does my child enjoy eating, in general?”
“Are they free to explore foods on their terms?”
“Is my own hidden agenda (read: getting my child to eat vegetables) interfering with them enjoying mealtimes or being able to listen to what their own body needs?”
Is the stress at mealtimes making it harder for you and your kids to eat?”
When the end goal for feeding is getting your child to eat vegetables or ensuring that your child takes a certain number of bites of veggies, then this can be a recipe for disaster for your whole family.
I know this might sound counterproductive, but getting your kids to eat should never be the end goal of feeding.
Eating is more than just nutrition itself. It’s connection and comfort, it’s a significant way in which your child will relate with you, as well as learn and grow.
When food is forced in any capacity, it’s much harder for your child to build positive connections with eating experiences.
Any pressure to eat is also not respectful to your child’s body and autonomy.
Your child can’t learn to trust her own body and her intuitive eating abilities if you don’t trust her to eat. Your child can’t build positive associations with food and eating if she never learns to trust her own body around food.
It’s important to remember that eating is something that happens in a stepwise process for kids.
They have to master eating and handling food on different levels before they actually feel comfortable trying or eating a food. Check out this post here for a more in depth explanation of what this process might look like: “How to Get a Picky Eater to Eat: 5 Proven Ways For Offering New Foods.”
We have to think about feeding kids as a long-term game, not the minutiae of each meal and bite they’re taking.
Rejection of veggies at any meal doesn’t mean you’re failing as a parent or that your child will be unhealthy.
It’s actually normal and expected behavior for kids.
When we try to prematurely get our kids to eat veggies before they’re ready or comfortable to do so, this is when trouble spots can occur and mealtime struggles ensue.
Kids need to be able to try and eat new foods on their terms, not ours. You’ve heard the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink?
Kids are the same way, yet sometimes, as parents, we have the notion that we’re doing something wrong if our kids won’t eat vegetables.
This is where it is crucial to zoom out and take a bird’s eye look at the overall picture of health for your child.
Your child’s health and how she feels about food and her body is largely dependent around her experiences with food and the type of feeding relationship she has with you.
It’s important to remember that vegetables are not the holy grail of foods, and your child is not going to become healthy just by eating vegetables.
If we want to raise children who have a positive relationship with food and their bodies, then it’s important to redefine what “health” means.
Having a healthy child doesn’t mean raising a kid who willingly eats vegetables or who’s compliant with trying a variety of new things.
As long as we hold this as the golden standard of health, we will constantly be defeated.
When we try to execute this kind of control in feeding our kids, we spur their contempt toward the very foods we want them to eat. It just doesn’t work.
If you’re truly concerned about raising a healthy child (which I know you are because you’re reading this post), then it’s more important for you to be focused on your feeding relationship with your child and her overall food experiences, rather than the food itself.
Because eating vegetables is not a “healthful” OR helpful goal for your child, here are some strategies you can focus on to help raise a healthy eater:
How to Raise a Healthy Child
Surrendering your own agenda:
The first and most important thing you can do for your child’s health and well-being, physically, mentally, and emotionally, is to surrender your own agenda and ideas about what you think your child’s health, appetite, and body size should look like.
Because as long as you're trying to steer the ship with your own destination in mind, you’ll never allow your child to get to where she needs to be.
The fact of the matter is that you have a lot less control than you might think over the outcome of your child’s health.
There are many factors at play that are going to influence your child’s body size and appetite that no amount of eating vegetables is going to change.
When you can surrender the things you can’t control and focus on your jobs with feeding, you are creating space to raise healthy, intuitive eaters who are confident in their bodies.
When you lay down your own expectations of how your child should eat or look, your child has the freedom to grow into the person she is already meant to be.
2. Fostering a trusting feeding relationship:
Once you fully surrender your own agenda around feeding your kids, you can better focus on your jobs with feeding.
But what exactly does this mean?
Remember that it’s not your job to get your kids to eat veggies or get them to eat - PERIOD.
So what are your jobs with feeding?
Eating will go best for your child when you are in charge of:
1) What to feed your child,
2) When to feed your child, and
3) Where meals take place.
That’s it!
With these jobs solely in your territory, your child can do her jobs with eating, which include: 1) Deciding whether or not she wants to eat from the food you’ve provided, and 2) Deciding how much she wants to eat from the foods you’ve provided.
When you stop trying to do your child’s jobs, like getting her to eat a certain amount of her food or eat specific foods on her plate (like veggies), you are creating a safe environment for her to learn about food and to eat what feels best for her body.
These are the aspects of building a trusting feeding relationship with your child, which is a crucial and necessary component for raising an intuitive eater and body confident child.
Helping your child listen to her body’s own innate wisdom around food and trusting herself to eat starts with you staying in your lane with your feeding jobs and trusting her to do her part with eating.
This is an evidenced-based approach to raising kids with a decreased risk of food and body-image issues.
3. Offering a variety of foods without any pressure:
So just because your kiddo turns her nose up at veggies means you should stop serving them at all? No, that is not the message here.
Remember that eating is a skill that kids are learning and developing. In order to learn how to eat veggies, kids need repeated opportunities in a safe and nurturing setting to be able to explore foods, like vegetables.
Bottom line here - serve it, and then forget about it. Meaning, you want to keep serving and introducing a variety of foods, including vegetables to your child.
The KEY is to not serve it with any pressure whatsoever to eat it.
Remember your jobs with feeding?
You are in charge of what you’re serving to your child, but once that food is on the table, the ball is now in your child’s court.
Keep in mind that pressure-to-eat tactics can take many different forms. It might look like telling your child how “healthy” this food is for him and that if he wants to grow big and strong, he should try a bite.
THIS IS PRESSURE for your child and will probably make him even more averse to eating those foods anyway.
Instead of worrying about what your child is or isn’t eating, try to focus more on creating positive mealtimes and neutral food exposures, which will help supporting your child’s growing skills with food.
This is more important to focus on rather than an arbitrary goal of getting them to eat those foods.
They will naturally be inclined to eat the foods they need to grow at a rate that is best for them, when they’re ready to do so on their terms.
Serving food family style at mealtimes can also be a way to help your child feel more comfortable in trying foods like vegetables on her own terms.
That means she can put it on her plate if she’s interested in it but isn’t required to put it on her plate if she doesn’t want to.
For more support on how to implement family style meals, check out this article here: How Family Style Dining Makes Feeding Kids Easier at Mealtime
Don’t forget that non-eating food exposures help increase your child’s comfortability with vegetables, too! This might include things like grocery shopping, cooking together, gardening, etc.
4. Making mealtimes a pleasant experience
When mealtimes become about getting your child to eat or are hyper focused on the foods your child is or isn’t eating, the joy goes out of eating.
This is a big reason why mealtimes can be super stressful for parents and kids alike. When you’re allowing your child to do her part with eating, you’ll have more mental space to focus on other things, like making mealtimes a positive experience.
I always tell parents to focus on anything BUT the food at mealtimes, and this can help give your child the space she needs to explore food on her terms.
Here are some ideas to help you bring more joy back to your meal times that you can use and adjust based on your family:
The “telephone” game: Ah, yes, remember this old-fashion game, where someone whispers a message to the person next to them and it gets passed all around? We’ve done this with my kids, and they think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them. Go figure.
The “Guessing Game”: Assign one person to think of a person, character or thing, and the rest of the family has to try to guess it. We do a Disney version of this game with our kids, and it’s a lot of fun.
Conversation starters: Keep a jar of conversation starters next to your dining table. Each night, a family member can pull one out and everyone gets to answer the question.
You get the idea. You can make it whatever you want, but just try to make it pleasant. When kids are relaxed at the table, they begin to have space to build positive associations with food, eating, and mealtimes.
5. Use neutral language around food:
Remember that health and nutrition are abstract concepts to kids.
They’re so innately connected to what their bodies need to grow at a rate that is best for them.
The best way to protect this is to focus on our jobs with feeding and trust them to eat.
This means we don’t need to tell them what is “healthier” for them, or talk about food in polarizing terms, like “good” versus “bad”.
A child will internalize this language and come to understand that food is what makes them a good or bad person.
This can be a trigger for disordered eating and unnecessary feelings of guilt around food.
Remember that health is so much more than the foods we eat.
When you are talking about food, try to stick more to the characteristics of the food itself, as these are concepts your child will better understand.
For example, you can say, “These carrots are so crunchy!”, or, “What colors do you see on your plate?”. These types of statements help your child to relate to food in a way that is understandable and non-threatening.
6. Approach all foods neutrally:
Approaching food in a neutral way with your kids is also as important as using neutral language.
This means that you don’t have rules around food that could potentially elevate or demonize certain foods for your child.
For example, your child shouldn’t have to eat their veggies in order to get dessert, or have dessert withheld for not eating any of their dinner.
This can be a trigger for disordered eating down the road and doesn't teach them to honor their bodies innate intuitive eating cues.
When food is approached this way, kids learn to rely on external rules rather than their innate cues to guide their eating abilities.
This is a surefire way to raise a child who hates vegetables and overeats desserts or feels out of control with sweets. Instead, opt to serve everything together - it’s all going in the same place anyway.
Let your child decide what to eat from the food you’ve provided without any rules or interference on your part.
7. Offer a comfort food with new foods:
Food neophobia, or fear of eating or trying new or unfamiliar foods, is a common occurrence in kids.
This is why that may be harder for your kids to eat things, like vegetables. It’s normal to expect this, and there are some ways you can help your child feel more comfortable with those unfamiliar foods.
Your child is going to gravitate toward safer foods if they feel any pressure to ear something that is stretching them out of their comfort zone.
Think about it like this: Imagine your child is put in a room of complete strangers. She is naturally going to look for any familiar faces that she can identify in the crowd and gravitate toward those people.
The same is true with food and eating. Remember that eating is a skill your child is learning how to develop.
When you put a plate in front of her with textures and flavors that are unknown or complex, she is naturally going to gravitate toward and want the foods that feel comfortable and easier.
For kids, these foods are commonly those beige, starchy foods that are easy to handle and digest (like bread, crackers, pasta, etc).
To help your child feel more comfortable and at ease with more challenging foods, be sure to include at least one comfort food alongside other foods during meals.
This is being considerate of your child’s preferences without catering to her. When she can identify something familiar at the table, other foods that are less inviting won’t feel as threatening.
8. If it's not delicious, they won't be interested:
Kids are more likely to make food choices based on what's familiar and what tastes good.
I’ve worked with so many moms who weren’t sure how to prepare vegetables outside of the rigid context of past diets.
Diet culture promotes this idea that in order to be healthy, vegetables should be eaten but without any fat or flavor, which is nonsense.
Many moms I’ve worked with have only ever eaten vegetables that were raw, plainly steamed, or salads with light dressing - and grew sick of eating them too!
The point is, if vegetables don’t TASTE good, your kids most likely won’t be interested in eating them or trying them.
So don’t be afraid to try new ways of preparing your veggies.
Adding butter not only improves the flavor but increases the nutrient absorption of vegetables, which is a WIN-WIN.
Experiment with veggies in different ways and in a variety of dishes, too - like veggies on pizza or in soups, stir-frys, etc.
Child Nutrition: Keeping the Long-Term Goals in Mind
As you can see, these strategies and tips don’t actually involve getting your child to eat certain foods, like vegetables, but rather, are focused on helping you promote a positive relationship with food for your child and in your home.
When we’re thinking long-term, these are the things that will help your child grow into a competent eater and healthier adult, with a decreased risk of problematic issues around food or her body.
So if your child isn’t into eating veggies or mealtimes have felt like a battle of negotiations, take a deep breath mama and a step back to remember this bigger picture when it comes to feeding your kiddos.
Reflect on Your Relationship With Food
One last thing to remember as you navigate your feeding journey with your child is to reflect on your own relationship with food and your body.
As we are on the topic of eating vegetables, it’s important to look back on your own experience around veggies.
Were you pressured to eat veggies as a child? Were there rules around food that stick with you to this day?
Whatever your past has been, it’s important to remember that you can choose to do things differently with your own child.
So often, in parenting, we tend to repeat behaviors that we learned from our parents because that’s all we’ve known. And so the cycle repeats until someone comes along and decides to do something differently.
That someone can be you, mama.
Even if you are working on your own relationship with food and learning to heal from food rules that diet culture has perpetuated in your life, you can create a positive foundation for your own children.
Need More Support Feeding Your Kids and Ending the Mealtime Struggles?
***Note: If your child is dealing with extreme picky eating and you are concerned about her overall intake and support, please be sure to connect to a pediatric registered dietitian and/or feeding professional who specializes in responsive feeding more more help and support.