Getting Children to Eat Vegetables

There are several ways of getting our child to eat fruit and vegetables, but you should think carefully about why your child doesn't like them; is it the texture, or the flavour or just the appearance that is unappealing? Think back to when you were young, while your parents might have forced you to eat a particular vegetable, why didn't you like it? You may love things like asparagus and brussel sprouts now and cabbage too, but did you when you were a child? Perhaps not. Our tastes change as we grow older, but there is not much point in trying to get a child to eat a strong-flavoured vegetable when others might be more palatable.

Try taking your child shopping and if he or she shows an interest in an exotic fruit or vegetable, buy it and get the child to taste it, after all the curiosity was there, so it may be to the child's taste. You may have to learn how to cook it if it is a 'new' vegetable. But you can enlist your child's help in the kitchen. Children who cook will take more of an interest in what they have produced than in whatever you have cooked for them. They can cook baby carrots or corn under supervision and can learn how to make a dip for these veggies too. You can try hummus, made from garbanzo beans (chickpeas) and sesame seeds, as this often appeals to children.

Buy fresh peas in their shells and ask your child to help you prepare them. When children are involved vegetables become less alien to them. Do the same with broad beans, and get your child to help prepare French or green beans too.

You can get your child to juice carrots and beets and make their own fresh fruit smoothies. I have never known a child refuse strawberries, or a banana, and if you pretend that you are monkeys, bananas usually go down well. You can nibble on carrots and lettuce like a rabbit with younger children and work your way through things that you can honestly claim that animals can eat. If you can make a game of eating children usually respond positively.

Buy a recipe book for kids and start allowing your child into the kitchen to cook under supervision of course. You can sit with your child and create a menu on the understanding that everyone will eat the food that has been cooked. Encourage your child to make a face with vegetables- red tomato or pepper strips for a mouth, a piece of cucumber for the nose, small radishes for the eyes and grated carrots for hair, with hard boiled eggs for ears for example.

A study undertaken at University College London by Lucy Cooke et al in 2010 found that children who were rewarded for eating fruit and vegetables, either with a lot of praise or a sticker, actually continued to eat the vegetables and like them even when the reward was no longer forthcoming. This may not be the ideal way of getting your child to eat fruit and vegetables but it seems to work.

Natural Meats Are Back and How in Evolution We Eat?

Natural meats would have been an un-natural phrase 20 years ago; and though meat has long been the center of every meal the world over, yet in some countries such as America this staple has a darker side and more unfavorable future in its present state. The light of a new day in the consciousness of many Americans has dawned, revealing the under belly of what we always thought was good. "Healthy meats are changing the way people eat and see what was always there". I will point out some differences in industry standard beef and natural beef. 

Natural beef is not injected with hormones as most beef is as the standard practice.

Healthy beef is not subjected to hormones that make the animal grow more muscle in a shorter period of time; most beef we consume receives hormone injections.

All-Natural beef does not receive injections to ward off insects and naturally occurring pests in our environment.

People are ready for healthy meats for the most part, but some people don't believe the idea that the foods we consume such as meats can have such an adverse effect on our health or quality of life, even though there is ample evidence to support this idea. More often than not we believe what the crowd on the right is telling us to believe. The numbers of people in the US that are obese have cancer and other chronic health conditions are staggering. It makes good sense to correlate our health to what we consume on a daily basis.

Consumers have the reins in their hands, the industry will respond to what the market wants; but that takes awareness. We as buyers have to understand and demand the products and production methodology that is in unison with our future health picture. The evidence shows that have not been the driving force in meat production at all in our country; but the call to produce more end sales faster and larger animals to pad the stockholders portfolio. This seemed to work for everyone; meat prices fell as production became cheaper and more people were able to put "good meat on the dinner table".

We have come full circle in the minds of many people; they want to get back to natural meats and healthier foods without all the enhancers that have turned their reality upside down. The market believes as well; "meat industry leaders are running" to get ahead of consumer driven need for healthy meats. People are beginning to think past today and their lifetime to see how these things affect our children and our neighbor's kids. It may be too large a leap to ask the industry to have a conscious but we can however; appeal to the business logic in the powers that be.

In the end we as individuals have to decide where we stand; this may not be as noble a cause as the constitution, yet it is a cause for prudent thought, consideration and action on the part of everyone around us. "We are what we eat" is a true saying and when we decide on healthy foods others will take note; change comes one mind at a time. Health is not everything, but it's pretty high up on the list for many. Eat naturally and live.