How do I get my 4 year old to eat his veggies?

Janna - posted on 07/11/2012

Hi ladies, thanks for responding.
I tried getting him to help make dinner- that didn't work. We try to hide the vegetables in stuff too, and now his new "favorite" thing to do is say, "I'm not feeling good to eat."
I'm still at a loss... He starts Pre-K on August 8th and I am a bit worried. I want him to eat at school without problems and I don't want to send him to school with just a sandwich every single day.

Jennifer - posted on 06/20/2012

Jessica Seinfeld has written 2 cookbooks with a lot of really, really good recipes. I have one of them, it's called "Double Delicious". All of the recipes use vegetable purée in them, like cauliflower, sweet potato, carrot, etc. There is even one for Caramel Corn that uses the sweet potato purée.
My son absolutely loves to help me cook, no matter what we are having. I have a Ninja, which is a lot easier to use for me than a food processor. He likes making the puréed vegetables and helping to scrape them into freezer bags.
What helped as far as eating actual whole vegetables was him getting into what we were doing. After a couple of times steaming the veggies he tried them, but only after his dad made a very dramatic ordeal about how good the veggies were that Jackson cooked. Now Jackson eats lots of things even I have a hard time swallowing, and he eats edemame like I can eat a bag of Fritos!

Xtina - posted on 06/10/2012

I agree that by helping you prepare meals it might make him more interested. Just last night i made pasta cheese bake with my 4yr old, and I had him pulling the little "trees" off the broccoli, then give it a stir and dash of cheese before it went in the oven. He ate every bit and also said "eat it all daddy, I made it taste nice" to my partner lol. Also telling him that eating greens will make him turn into the incredible hulk when he grows up worked well too!! lol ;)

Charlotte - posted on 06/06/2012

have you tried hiding them in his food? or if your worried about him not having veg in his diet why not try the vegetarian meats and chicken. another option would be make vegetables fun to him like when i was younger my mam used to cut the top off a carrot and put it on a plate of water and told us if we ate all our carrots this carrot top will grow hair get him involved in preparing your meals this can also temp him to try it you said he used to like celery this can become ants on a log by putting peanut butter on the celery and then place the rasions on top