How to Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables (Without a Fight)

Feeding a family isn't a knowledge problem. Most parents know what a good meal looks like. The hard part is getting it on the table on a Tuesday and getting everyone to eat it. Coach Jennifer Saucier walked through three things that make it simpler: eating the rainbow, sorting out who's responsible for what at dinner, and getting everybody around the table.

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What does "eat the rainbow" actually mean?

It means color is the shortcut. Different colored fruits and vegetables carry different nutrients, so filling the plate with variety covers more ground than eating the same two vegetables all week.

You don't have to memorize anything. Reds and pinks: strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, cherries. Oranges and yellows: carrots, sweet potatoes, peaches, corn. Greens: broccoli, spinach, green beans, avocado, kiwi. Blues and purples: blueberries, blackberries, grapes, cabbage, eggplant.

Aim for a few colors across the day, not every color at every meal. For kids, a plate with three colors on it is a good day.

This matters more than most people realize. According to the CDC, fewer than 1 in 10 children and adults eat the recommended amount of vegetables, and only about 4 in 10 children eat enough fruit.

Who decides what your kids eat, and how much?

This is the piece that takes the fight out of dinner, and it's Jennifer's second tip.

The division of responsibility works like this: you decide what gets served, and when. Your child decides whether to eat it, and how much. That's the whole arrangement. You're not negotiating, and you're not running a short-order kitchen.

It sounds harsh on night one. By week three it's the calmest dinner table you've had.

The kitchen half of it matters just as much. Kids who help make the food are far more likely to eat it:

• Two to four: washing produce, tearing lettuce, stirring, dumping ingredients in a bowl.
• Five to eight: measuring, cracking eggs, a butter knife on soft things, setting the table.
• Nine to twelve: stovetop with you nearby, following a simple recipe start to finish, packing their own lunch.
• Teenagers: one dinner a week, start to finish, their choice.

It's slower and messier. It's also what gets the food eaten.

How can I get my kids to eat more vegetables?

Keep offering them, and stop making it a battle.

• Put them out before anybody's starving. Raw vegetables on the counter while you're cooking get eaten more than the same vegetables on the dinner plate.
• Serve one thing you know they'll eat alongside everything else. Nobody goes to bed hungry, and you're not cooking twice.
• Keep offering what they rejected. It can take many tries before a kid accepts a new food. Tonight's no isn't permanent.
• Let them help pick and prepare them. A child who chose the peppers at the store is a child who might eat the peppers.
• Don't make dessert the reward for vegetables. It teaches them one is a chore and the other is the prize.
• Skip the commentary. No good foods and bad foods, and no talk about anybody's body at the table.

What if one of them won't eat any of it?

Keep offering, and keep the pressure off.

Put one thing on the table you know they'll eat, so nobody goes to bed hungry and you're not cooking twice. Don't make dessert the reward for finishing vegetables — that teaches them one is a chore and the other is the prize. And skip the commentary at the table. No good foods and bad foods, and no talk about anybody's body.

Tonight's no isn't permanent, either. It can take a lot of tries before a child accepts a new food, so the one they pushed away in June is worth putting back on the plate in September.

If you've got a genuinely picky eater on your hands, that's a subject of its own, and Jennifer gave a whole talk on it: How to Get a Picky Eater to Try New Foods.

How often should we eat together as a family?

More often than most of us manage, and it doesn't have to be dinner.

Aim for a few shared meals a week and build from there. Breakfast counts. Saturday lunch counts. A Wednesday night with everybody at the table and the television off counts, even if it's leftovers.

Keep it realistic. Three real family meals a week that actually happen beat a plan for seven that falls apart by Tuesday.

What should be on the plate?

Jennifer closed with the principles behind all of it:

• Whole foods first. Meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, a little starch, and not much sugar.
• Balance every meal and snack. A protein, a low-glycemic carbohydrate, and a healthy fat.
• Go easy on processed carbohydrates and sugar.

That's the same framework for the adults in the house as for the kids. One dinner, one set of rules.

None of this takes a new grocery budget or a cabinet full of supplements. It takes a plan you can repeat on a normal week.

If you want help building one around your family, your schedule, and the food your people will actually eat, that's what nutrition coaching at Bandit is for. Talk to a coach — twenty minutes, no pressure, and you'll leave with somewhere to start.

Jennifer Saucier is Director of Nutrition Services at Bandit CrossFit, a CrossFit Level 2 trainer and Healthy Steps Nutrition certified coach.