Ensuring your children get enough fruit to eat each day can be a real battle, especially when there is so much temptation from other, less healthy snacks. So what can be done? Don’t worry; there are plenty of ways to encourage your children to eat more fruit. I’m sharing ways to encourage children to eat more fruit.
Keep It In Sight
If your children never see the fruit you bring into the house because it immediately gets put into the crisper drawer or into a cupboard somewhere, only to be brought out when you’re preparing some kind of dish with it, they’re not going to be used to having it around, and they’re not going to understand that it’s the ideal filler when they’re hungry.
The more children see fruit and see that it’s available whenever they want it, the more they will start to incorporate it into their everyday routines, especially if there are no other snacks on display to choose from over the fruit ones.
Make It Fun
Fruit, as delicious as it might be, can also be rather boring, and kids know it. But what if you could make it more fun? Would your children be more inclined to enjoy fruit over and above anything else? It could be exactly the right thing to do, and there are lots of ways to make fruit fun. One option, for example, is to make an easy cream cheese fruit dip so that the kids can dip their snack or even help to make it with you. Or you might challenge the children to a taste test, having them close their eyes when they eat so they can try to guess what type of fruit they’re eating.
The more fun you can make fruit, the more intrigued children will be and the more they will want to eat it. As with anything boring, it simply won’t appeal and they will always look for something else.
Make It Easy
If you give your children a fruit to take to school and it comes home again perfectly intact, what could be the issue? It might be that the fruit you’ve chosen is just too tricky to navigate, especially for younger children, and it’s easier to ignore it altogether, even if they’re actually feeling hungry.
Fruit like oranges and bananas and grapes that still have their seeds are always going to be a challenge to eat, whereas apples or pears (especially if they have been cut into pieces and sprinkled with lemon juice to prevent them turning brown) or perhaps nice chunks of watermelon or pineapple, will be much more tempting because they’re easier to eat. This could be the difference between children who eat fruit and those who bypass it altogether; make it easy for them to eat, and they will likely do so.
These tips can help children eat a more balanced and healthy diet.
