Helpful Tips for Parents

• Involve children in food preparation. Children who help prepare a meal are statistically more likely to eat it, even if it contains ingredients they previously rejected.

• Picky eating peaks between ages 2–5 and is developmentally normal. Most picky eaters significantly expand their diets between ages 6–10 without intervention.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I handle a preschooler who won't eat at mealtimes but is hungry 20 minutes later?

This pattern (refusing meals, requesting snacks immediately after) usually indicates one of three things: the meal's timing is wrong (not actually hungry yet), the meal's composition isn't appealing, or snacks are available too close to meals (reducing mealtime hunger). Maintain a predictable meal and snack schedule: 3 meals and 2–3 planned snacks 2–3 hours apart. Stick to the schedule — food is available at scheduled times only. The brief hunger between scheduled times is mild and temporary; it doesn't harm the child and it resets their appetite for the next meal.

Related reading: See also our breakfast ideas guide and our rainbow snack board guide for more ideas on this topic.

🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🥦 Healthy Food Knowledge — Learning about different foods, food groups, and what nutrients do in the body builds the food literacy that supports a lifetime of informed, health-conscious eating choices.
• 🌈 Sensory Exploration — Experiencing the tastes, textures, smells, and colors of different foods expands sensory tolerance and — over many exposures — is the most evidence-based pathway to accepting previously rejected foods.
• 🧪 Science Literacy — Understanding where food comes from, how cooking changes its properties, and what nutrients do in the body connects food experiences to biology, chemistry, and the broader scientific understanding of the natural world.
• 🤝 Family & Cultural Connection — Sharing meals and preparing traditional family foods connects children to family history, cultural identity, and the social bonds that family mealtimes — one of the strongest protective factors in child development — provide.

Week 7 Challenge - Keep Serving Vegetables

Posted:

02/12/07

The next healthy eating challenge is to set the stage for a vegetable-eating preschooler. Vegetables may be an integral part of a healthy diet, but they aren't known as a favorite food among preschoolers. If you are offering vegetables in the form of bland, quickly-cold, side dishes each night, try new and appetizing options. You might find that meeting the preschooler vegetable goal is not so hard.

Not only do vegetables provide fiber and important nutrients for your preschooler, eating vegetables has been shown over and over to help reduce the risk of many chronic diseases of adulthood. Enjoying vegetables as a family will help your preschooler develop healthy eating habits for life.

According to the Food Guide Pyramid, preschoolers should eat about 1 to 1 ½ cups of vegetables each day. Each of these preschooler-sized portions equals ½ cup toward that goal. Choose 2 or 3 each day to meet your preschooler's goal:

½ cup broccoli florets

½ cup baby carrots, about 6

½ cup mashed potato, squash, or sweet potato

½ cup beans, such as black beans, refried beans, or kidney beans

½ cup tofu cubes

½ cup corn

½ cup peas

½ cup cucumber

½ cup chopped tomato

1 cup raw leafy greens such as raw spinach or leafy lettuce

(For a complete listing of what counts as one cup of vegetables, see this chart at MyPyramid.gov)

What to Work on This Week

1. Each day, offer 1 to 1 ½ cups of vegetables to your preschooler

2. Include a variety of vegetables during the week. Choose from dark green vegetables (broccoli, spinach), orange vegetables (carrots, squash), beans (refried beans, kidney beans), starchy vegetables (potatoes, corn), and all the others (cucumbers, mushrooms, tomatoes).

Tips for Success

• Don't force your preschooler to eat vegetables. Instead, offer an overall healthy diet, serve vegetables often with meals and snacks, enjoy vegetables yourself, and maybe even start a vegetable garden with your preschooler this year.

• Add vegetables to soups and stews that your preschooler enjoys.

• Beans can be a versatile way for preschoolers to enjoy vegetables. Try edamame (boiled soybeans), refried bean and cheese tortillas, bean soup or stew, black beans or baked beans.

• Tofu, made from soybeans, does double-duty when it comes to nutrition. It is high in protein like meat and it's a plant food so it contains many of the same healthful nutrients in other vegetables and beans. Use tofu in place of meat in stews, sauces and soups or saute cubes of tofu for a quick meal.

• Celebrate the seasons by enjoying vegetables when in season - at peek flavor and cheapest price. Start traditions with your favorites - summer means corn on the cob, fall means butternut squash, winter means cauliflower, and spring means asparagus.

More Help for Adding Vegetables to Your Preschoolers's Diet

What if My Preschooler Doesn't Eat Vegetables?

Does your preschooler refuse to eat vegetables? Here is what you need to know about why vegetables are important plus simple tips to help plan a healthy diet for those vegetable-free days or weeks.

Preschoolers, Eat Your Vegetables! - Simple Ideas and Recipes

The best way to get your preschooler to eat vegetables is to relax, don't force them to eat, and serve vegetables over and over. For ideas and recipes, try these vegetable snacks, vegetable main dishes, and vegetable side dishes.

Next Week's Challenge

Fruit - The sweetness of fruit makes this food group popular with preschoolers. Is your preschooler meeting the fruit goal?

References:

The Food Guide Pyramid. http://www.mypyramid.gov/

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