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How often have you given your child vegetables at dinner time only to find them being pushed around their plate or worst still being thrown on the floor or hidden under the chair cushion or in a pot plant?. Here are some great little tips and tricks to get your kids to eat vegetables.

Make a big pot of vegetable soup, puree it up and then add some alphabet noodle shapes.With a little luck your kids will be too busy spelling words, or looking for the letters in their names to notice all the veggies they are eating in the soup.

Grate your vegetables and hide them in other foods! Add grated carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and other vegetables to foods you make. Your kids will eat vegetables without even knowing it and will love the food.

If you can’t make them eat vegetables, make them drink it. Pour some vegetable juice over ice and add a straw, a cocktail umbrella or a stick of celery and watch them drink it up. Your kids may not get as much fiber as eating the entire vegetable, but getting them to drink their vegetables is better than not getting any vegetables in their system.

Offering them a plate of raw vegetables with some ranch dressing to dip them in? Many kids who don’t care much for cooked vegetables will eat them up if they can dip them. Just grab a bag of baby carrots some celery, snow peas and some cucumber. Arrange them on a plate with a little bit of ranch dressing or any other dip on the side.

Let your kids create artwork with their vegetables. Offer raw vegetables in different colors and shapes and encourage them to make a vegetable collage on their plate. Before you know it, you’ll find them sampling their creations.

Let them help themselves by putting vegetables out like a buffet. Put out some lettuce, some sliced tomato, slices of cucumber, shredded carrot, mushrooms, small pieces of broccoli and anything else you can think of. Let them choose what vegetables they would like and they will be more likely to eat them.

Get them involved in the kitchen especially when it comes to cooking. Ask them to wash the vegetables, if they are old enough let them cut veggies (under your supervision of course), let them help you stir, or anything else you can think of that would be age appropriate. You’ll be amazed at how proud they will be of their finished product and will want to eat it.

Cook some carrots with your potatoes and mash them up together for some special orange mashed potatos. Make carrot cakes and muffins, what kid can resist a muffin?

Tags: eat, family, vegetables