Healthy Meals to Promote Healthy Eating Habits in Kids

Start out slow
While you may have visions of a beautiful stir-fry and brown rice, starting simple can be the easiest way to turn mediocre meals into healthy ones.

Megan Tucker, an elementary school teacher, suggests broadening your children's horizons by introducing one or two new fruits or vegetables to your go-to produce choices.

"My school district, in partnership with the Alameda County Public Health Nutrition Services Department, provides schools with a program to introduce healthy foods to students. Three days a week, all of the classes are given a fruit or vegetable snack. We also receive a fruit or vegetable of the month, often a less common item, to encourage children to try something they had never eaten before," Tucker told Mom.com

At home, add new fruits and vegetables into your meals by topping a plain green salad with thinly sliced avocado or kiwi, or add a radish rose garnish to a vegetable and pasta soup.

Taste Tests
Committing to an entire piece of spinach zucchini lasagna might prove challenging for children with picky palates, so start with sample-size portions and work your way toward a meal. "Do a taste test to introduce children to different varieties of fruits or vegetables — for example have them taste Granny Smith, Pink Lady, and Fuji apples," Tucker recommended. Add a new burrito filling or taco topping to your usual mix, such as sautéed potatoes and carrots or pinto beans mixed with chopped tomato.

And once you find something healthy they’ll actually eat, don’t be shy about making a lot of it. “Early on I discovered that my extremely picky son liked carrots sautéed in olive oil with some dried dill. It was like a miracle! So I make him that a lot,” mom Amy Oztan previously told Mom.com. “If you actually find something they like that's healthy, make it as often as they want.”

Provide Choices
Nothing creates more tension than preparing a meal and watching your children refuse it. Make the process more relaxing by allowing an element of choice. "Create your own salad bar, allowing children to choose from a selection of toppings," Tucker suggested.

The Nourish Interactive website — a resource for healthy eating guidelines for kids — suggests chopping vegetables or fruits and providing a few dipping sauces for children to sample, such as yogurt and cucumber, or peanut butter studded with raisins. Serve these combinations with a whole grain pasta or brown rice and a side of grilled fish or beans, and you'll have a healthy meal that your child will enjoy.

Check out The Scramble for other at-home salad bar items that will have your little ones eating more veggies in no time: crunchy chopped lettuce, shredded carrots, diced cucumbers, steamed broccoli florets, diced cooked beets, grape or cherry tomatoes (make sure to slice in half or quarters), edamame, and sunflower seeds.

Get to the Root of Things
"Visit a community garden and plant your own fruits or vegetables," Tucker suggested. "Students get very excited about seeing where foods come from. It could be as simple as planting a bean in a plastic cup!" Children are more likely to try a new leafy green or sprout when they planted or picked it. Sauté garden greens with nuts and seeds, and serve them over brown rice, polenta, or quinoa for a simple, healthy meal.

“I just want to make sure my child is eating well and has the energy to focus on school,” mom of three Jamie Coughlin previously told Mom.com.

Adopting healthy eating habits entails more than adding fresh produce, lean sources of protein, whole grain carbohydrates, and healthy fats to the diet. Get the whole family on board with some essential healthy choices, especially when they snack and when they’re at school. "Cut out the sugary drinks [and] drink water," Tucker said. "When students would talk about how much they liked sugary drinks, I would always respond, 'They taste good, but they are not good for your body!'"

Avoid highly salted or sweetened convenience and snack foods. Prepare healthy treats ahead of time so you do not resort to processed foods in a pinch. The Nourish Interactive website recommends offering children choices between several types of fruits or vegetables. Dried fruit, nuts, chopped vegetables, cheese cubes, whole grain crackers, fresh fruit, and unsweetened yogurt are all tasty and healthy alternatives to junk food.

Parents may assume that children understand how making healthy choices affects their lives, but spending a few moments studying nutrition labels together makes the relationship more concrete. "Talk to your children about how their food choices affect the way that their brains and bodies function," Tucker advised. This connection can help your kids create a good relationship with healthy food.

Another way for kids to make the connection: Model good behavior in the foods you eat, cook, and shop for. Your kids are watching you and will follow your lead. “I believe that a child’s diet is based on the parent's, so if you eat healthy and make healthy meals, it will encourage your child to make the same choices," teen Hazel Holmes previously told Mom.com.