{"id":1361,"date":"2009-09-15T16:05:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T22:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/wordpress\/?p=1361"},"modified":"2013-08-22T18:56:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T18:56:22","slug":"struggling-to-get-your-kids-to-eat-fruits-and-vegetables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/e\/struggling-to-get-your-kids-to-eat-fruits-and-vegetables\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling to Get Your Kids to Eat Fruits and Vegetables?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a child to a garden full of colorful vegetables or an orchard filled with sweet smelling fruit, and I bet your little ones will want\u00a0to take a few bites\u2026and then a few more.<\/p>\n

Our recent family trip to the local pick-your-own peach farm confirmed my belief that exposing my daughter to how our food grows is good for her health.\u00a0 All her senses were engaged: the smell of ripe peaches, the site of beautiful green trees dotted with yellow-orange peaches, the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves, the feel of a fuzzy peach, and best of all, the taste of amazingly sweet, juicy peaches.<\/p>\n

\"PickPeach\"\u00a0 \"Peach\"<\/p>\n

She loved picking peaches.\u00a0 She’d pick a peach and immediately open wide to take a big bite.\u00a0 She thought every peach she picked, she could eat.\u00a0 We taught her to pick a peach and then run over to the basket and gently place it in with the others.\u00a0 The \u201cgently\u201d part took quite a while for her to catch on to \u2013 pitching it with all the force an 18 month old could muster seemed to be the technique she preferred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Bring a bottle of water to wash the fruit before taking\u00a0a bite.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Although peach season has ended in much of the country, apple picking has just begun.\u00a0 Check out www.pickyourown.org<\/a>\u00a0to find local pick-your-own farms in your area.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t live near an orchard or farm, you can still\u00a0teach your children about the way different food grows and provide them with opportunities to taste different fruits and vegetables from the store.\u00a0 Your local librarian is a great resource and\u00a0is bound to\u00a0know some good children\u2019s books on how various fruits and vegetables grow.\u00a0 Our library has a book entitled Apple Harvest that my daughter loved.\u00a0 At the grocery store, we looked at all the different colors of apples and selected a few different types of apples to try at home.\u00a0 The sight of an apple now evokes an excited \u201cAPPLE!\u201d exclamation from her.<\/p>\n

There is a wealth of research showing that children\u2019s participation in gardening, harvesting, or just\u00a0preparing food\u00a0increases the likelihood that they will try the food.\u00a0 If eating fruits and vegetables is a struggle between you and your child, try a different technique.\u00a0 Involve your child in preparing different fruit and vegetable dishes and let them decide if they\u2019ll try it.\u00a0 I bet they\u2019ll take a bite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Take a child to a garden full of colorful vegetables or an orchard filled with sweet smelling fruit, and I bet your little ones will want\u00a0to take a few bites\u2026and then a few more. Our recent family trip to the local pick-your-own peach farm confirmed my belief that exposing my daughter to how our food grows is good for her Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,780],"tags":[49,168,51,123],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e","category-nutrition-2","tag-children","tag-fruits-and-vegetables","tag-kids","tag-nutrition","cat-42-id","cat-780-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/EatPeach1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8418,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions\/8418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}