10 Ways to Raise Healthy Eaters

Raising healthy eaters can be so challenging! To help, I have listed my top 10 ways to raise healthy eaters in your family.

Getting kids to eat a variety of healthy foods, especially at dinnertime can be difficult, to say the least. A well-crafted dinner can quickly turn into a circus of children’s’ screams, dumped plates of food on the table, or your child storming off in a tantrum, yelling that dinner is ‘disgusting’! We’ve all been there. However, teaching your children to be good eaters is achievable! We are so relieved that each of our three children is either already a good eater or learning how to become one. Follow along with me as I give you my hints for raising a family of healthy eaters!

1. Be patient

This first suggestion for raising healthy eaters in your family is to be patient! Raising healthy eaters is a process that is crafted throughout their childhood and even adolescence. There will be moments when even the healthiest child fusses about a meal. That is okay, and certainly normal!

Patience is key in acknowledging that raising a healthy eater will not happen overnight. A slow, steady, patient, and calm approach will always succeed better than rushing children or being too aggressive about their eating habits. Take a deep breath and remember that raising your healthy eater is a work in progress!

2. Start healthy eaters young

The second of my 10 ways to raise healthy eaters is to start when your children are young. Many parents begin feeding solid food to their children around 6 months of age. The type of food they provide varies based on culture, upbringing, and personal opinion. My hint is to simply be sure that your children are being fed a wide range of healthy flavours as soon as possible. Avocado, carrots, fruit, beans, squash, and various protein sources (ie meats/legumes) help keep the taste for refined sugar and fat at bay.

Always provide healthy foods to your young child. If they turn it down, simply offer another healthy option (when they are a baby/toddler). However, don’t give up on the food they turned down! It can take 10 or more tries to have a child accept a new flavour. Just offer the food again a little while later and you may be surprised when they eat it and smile!

NOTE: It is still entirely possible to teach an older child how to be a healthy eater. Sure, there may be a learning curve as their taste buds and body adjust to the new flavours, but if you are calm and consistent with the rest of these hints, you will most likely succeed!

3. Emulate the behaviour you want to see

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our children throw tantrums and rudely refuse to eat the healthy meal we are providing to them. When this happens, they get little to no reaction from us. We simply continue to emulate the behaviour we want them to have. My husband and I remain seated, and if the child has left the table, they get no attention from us. If they want to talk to us, they must be seated politely in their chair.

My husband and I often discuss how much we are enjoying our meal with each other. Comments like “This is delicious!”, and “Yum! How did you make this?” are common at our table. The kids hear these positive comments about the meal, and begin to develop a positive relationship around their meal.

We tend to ignore our children’s negative comments about a meal. They may be looking for a reaction from us, but they won’t get one. If they wish to say something kind about the meal, we love to chat! We do not spend our meal pleading, scolding, or making deals with our kids. We enjoy our meal and encourage them to join us!

Side note: In addition to talking about how delicious a meal is, we also mention regularly how healthy foods make us run faster and grow stronger. After dinner we have been known to have races to see who developed the most muscle or speed after eating the healthy meal. A little happy competition never hurt anyone, right?!

4. Don’t make separate food or meals

It can be very tempting to provide a separate meal to your child that caters to their current tastes and preferences. However, if you are wanting to raise a healthy eater, this can be a slippery slope.

Once a child realizes that their parent will make a separate meal for them if they refuse to eat the communal meal, they are often inclined to expect it daily. Parents often worry that their child will go hungry or lack any nutrition if they don’t feed them a separate meal and they refuse to eat the main meal.

I, personally, have never witnessed this starvation by refusing to eat dinner…will the child be hungry? Yes.

Will they eventually eat because they are hungry? Most often.

Have my children ever gone to bed with hungry bellies because they refused to eat the healthy meal that was provided to them? Yes, but I can assure you they ate huge breakfasts the next day, and were far more inclined to try dinner that night as well!

This may take some time (and a lot of consistency) to develop in slightly older children, especially if they are used to separate meals. In these cases, I suggest sitting down with them and calmly explaining to them that you won’t be making separate meals anymore, but there will be a healthy, yummy meal for them to eat with the family. Stay calm, stay consistent and loving, and they will eventually get used to this new standard!

A note on separate meals…

Once in a while it may be alright to provide separate food, but this is only once you know that they would also be willing to eat the meal you feed everyone else.

For example, you may decide to feed your child plain pasta and fresh veggies and dip because you are having a fancy date-night meal with your husband later in the evening, and you don’t want to cook two meals. Once or twice a week I also cook meals I know they love (ie simple pasta and sauce). This helps balance the more challenging meals with ‘easier’ ones throughout the week.

5. Change the name of your healthy meal

The fifth of my 10 ways to raise healthy eaters can sometimes require a few ‘tricks’ or manipulations, so-to-speak. One thing that I have found very effective in our home is changing the name of the meal when my child asks me what’s for dinner.

Let’s say I’m making a Broccoli Rabe, White Bean, Sausage Soup. It is one of my favourites, but is full of greens, beans, and chopped veggies. I can understand how eating it could be daunting to some children!

To combat this, try changing the recipe name to something that your kids would enjoy. Focus on the ingredients that you know the kids like.

For example, I call the soup mentioned above Sausage, Tomato, and Noodle Soup. I am not being dishonest: all of those ingredients are in the soup. It does, however, take the focus off the ingredients the kids are unsure of, and often avoids a pre-dinner tantrum!

I also like to add a bread to dip in the soup to help get the kids excited about the meal, however, they must dip the bread in the soup to eat it, and no second slice until they have eaten a good portion of soup!

6. Get your kids into the kitchen

Having children involved in the preparation of their meal is a great way to help raise healthy eaters! Kids often get excited about food and are proud to say they helped make it.

Let your kids help make dinner. Let them add a few spices or veggies of their choosing (perhaps give them 2 -3 options) to the dish. They will likely be more inclined to at least try the meal if they helped make it.

Furthermore, have your children come with you to the grocery store, and spend extra time in the produce department allowing them to explore all the healthy options and pick out some new veggies to bring home and try!

7. Dessert can be an occasional reward for healthy eaters

I never force my children to eat every bite of their meal. I try to portion out (or have them serve themselves) reasonable-sized portions to avoid waste. However, on days we have decided there will be dessert, they must show a valiant attempt at eating their entire meal. For a child who really doesn’t like the meal, a solid 5 or so spoonfuls may warrant a small dessert (because they really went outside of their comfort zone to try the foods).

It should also be noted that I tend to only offer dessert for the meals that are more of a challenge for them. Pizza night, pasta night, taco night, for example, often don’t include dessert. Also, dessert is never a given…I don’t want my kids to expect dessert after meals.

When we do have dessert, we try to keep it simple. These days I have been giving them multivitamin and omega 3 gummies as a dessert. They think they are just getting candy, and I know there is some additional benefit to them.

We also like to offer fruit and yogurt, a scoop of ice cream, or a bit of chocolate. It is never big, but they always think it is a really special treat!

8. Don’t label your children as ‘picky eaters’

This hint is so important. It will be difficult to raise healthy eaters if they have been (often unintentionally) labelled otherwise. Number eight of my 10 ways to raise healthy eaters is to avoid labelling your child.

When speaking with friends and family, I suggest not calling your child a ‘picky eater’. A negative label can be difficult to overcome, even for the parent. Children who overhear this comment can then label themselves as ‘picky eaters’, creating a negative dialogue in their own minds surrounding their relationship with food.

If one of our children is going through a phase of not wanting to eat what we serve, we rarely discuss it or mention it to others. This is because we know it is a temporary moment for the child, and with consistency and patience, they will likely begin eating new and healthy foods again.

9. Remove temptation

The more unhealthy, easy-to-access foods there are in the home, the more difficult it will be not to give in to your child’s meltdowns. When they need a snack, be sure to have healthy options like hard-boiled eggs, whole grain crackers, fruit, or snap peas available.

Try to remove as much processed foods as possible from your cupboards, and over time, your kids will learn that the only options available to them are ‘ones that make them stronger, not weaker’. That is the saying we use with our kids, because who doesn’t want to be strong?!

10. Remember – even healthy eaters don’t like everything

Sometimes we feel frustrated if our children don’t want to eat what we have served them. We don’t like to waste food, and we want our kids to like a wide range of flavours. We can feel like we are failing if they don’t like everything.

The last of my 10 ways to raise healthy eaters is to remember to help keep things in perspective and to aim for politeness, not perfection.

I want our children to be able to sit politely at a table, be served a meal, and taste it. If they don’t really like it, I want them to still try to eat as much as they can.

Just like adults, they don’t have to love everything they try, but they do need to be polite about it. This way if we are out in public and they are served a bouncy green pudding-thing by Aunt Gertrude, they have the skills in place to avoid throwing it across the room and running from the table!

In the end…

Just remember, healthy eaters are not raised overnight. Take a deep breath. Know there may be some backlash from your child at first, but if you are calm and consistent with these 10 ways to raise healthy eaters, they are likely to eventually learn to appreciate their meal. Try not to accommodate rude or picky behaviour around meals and snacks. and stay positive. We all want the best for our children, and want them to be well-rounded adults. Healthy eating starts young, and starts at home. I have total faith that you can do this!

Looking for more?

You can learn more about scientifically-backed ways to help picky eaters in this article by Today’s Parent!

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