I’m 42 years old now but still have vivid memories of being a child and my mother, being the responsible parent, trying to get me to eat the veggies on my dinner plate. Why is it such a psychological barrier for a kid when presented with this scenario? Is it because every TV commercial only focuses on making heroes out of junk food and ignores vegetables as the ugly runt?
I’m not going to delve into the root causes of why children stubbornly fight the greens on their plate, as this is probably a thesis on its own, but rather I would like to focus on how you can overcome this challenge. I have three children and all react differently to the prospect of eating veggies with their dinner. Jenna, who loves to help cook and enjoys TV shows on the subject, is open to eating whatever food is on her plate. Oliver (the taller of the twins) is an eating machine even though he is incredibly lean. Christopher is exactly how I was as a kid in that he sees veggies as an insurmountable challenge. He plays with his food hoping that the green nasties will biodegrade by the time it comes to washing up the dishes. He is however, getting better each day in eating a wider variety of veggies because I’ve learnt how to help him overcome this barrier.
Firstly, before I get to the juicing part and share my view on what juices kids love you have to take it a step back. I’m a firm believer in that you reap what you sow. In this case, since my kids love gardening I involve them in the plating and maintaining of our vegetable gardens. By being part of the process they get to appreciate the plant lifecycle from the seed that they plant to the end result on their dinner plate or in a juice.
To tackle the next barrier of the overused and timeless phrase of “just try it” I feel it is about sensitizing the taste buds for kids to realize that not all fruit and veggies are horrible tasting. This is achieved by creating a variety of juices and for each juice I let them help me make it and we talk about what goes into the ingredients. I find that over time they become accustomed to each vegetable and lose the fear of eating it.
An important tip is to try select some really tasty juice recipes to start with so that they buy into the idea and then get more adventurous from there. Some of my kids favorite juices are the following:
- Aussie gold – pineapple, yellow pepper, turmeric, ginger, lemon
- Captain melon – watermelon, pineapple, ginger
- Sunburst – red people, carrots, lemon, oranges
For ideas on juicing recipes check out rebootwithjoe.com
John Westermeyer 