Picky eaters can make mealtime a real challenge for health-conscious parents. Encouraging young kids to eat healthy food, especially a variety of vegetables, can feel like an uphill battle. However, there’s a great way to ensure that even the pickiest of eaters get their daily dose of veggies without the fuss. The secret? Hide vegetables in food! In this blog post, I’ll explore the benefits of hiding vegetables in a child’s meals and provide some creative and tasty hidden veggie recipes that they most likely eat without a fuss.
Why Hide Vegetables?
Including plenty of vegetables in children’s diets is crucial as they are rich in essential vitamins, minerals, plant chemicals, and fibre. Consuming a balanced diet that is high in fruits and vegetables can lessen the risk of developing cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, and drastically reduces the likelihood of childhood obesity. Essentially, even the pickiest of eaters need to consume vegetables on a daily basis! That’s why it’s a good idea to get creative and even a little bit devious when it comes to serving them vegetables, even if they’re not always aware they’re eating them…
Creative Ways to Hide Vegetables
- Pasta Sauce with a Twist: A classic favourite for kids, pasta sauce is the perfect canvas for hidden vegetables. A blender/food processor is a parent’s best friend when it comes to cramming extra veggies into a pasta sauce! Virtually anything can go into a tomato-based sauce. I’ve found that the best way is to fry up onions, carrots and red peppers (or really any vegetables you want), chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes and then blitz in a blender once it’s all cooked. Try adding leafy greens such as chard or spinach in there as well – as long as you don’t add too much, the kids will never know it’s in there once everything has been blended. Buying ready-chopped frozen spinach from the supermarket is a brilliant way to add spinach either to tomato-based or cheese-based pasta sauces in seconds. just boil it for a couple of minutes, or even just add it directly to the sauce still frozen if you prefer. Sweetcorn can also be mixed into a simple pasta-pesto dish without being too obtrusive/offensive to the child!
- Sneaky Spaghetti: Swap out regular pasta with spaghetti squash or courgette/zucchini noodles. These veggies mimic the texture of traditional pasta while providing a cup of vegetables per serving. Your child’s food probably won’t even spot the difference.
- The Peanut Butter Secret: Hiding vegetables in peanut butter is another great trick. Blend sweet potatoes or butternut squash into it for a sweet spread that’s perfect for sandwiches or to go with apple slices. For an extra tasty and healthy snack, try spreading veggie-laden peanut butter onto toast topped with apple slices and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Delicious for kids and adults!
- Burger Makeover: Veggie burgers are a great idea for cramming vegetables into picky kids. The internet is awash with recipes for homemade veggie burgers, so go for recipes that look easy to make and contain as many different veggies as possible! You can even buy veggie burgers from the supermarket if you’re short on time. Opt for brands with the lowest salt content and try different ones out on your kids to see which ones are a hit.
- Vegetable Bakes! There are so many recipes for sweet bakes that contain vegetables, giving an extra health kick even when it’s treat time. For the pickiest eaters, start by giving them your bakes that include vegetables without them seeing you making it. Once they’re wolfing down your creations, start getting them involved in the baking process to show that baking using vegetables can be incredibly tasty! Easy recipes to consider are courgette/zucchini bread, carrot cake, courgette cake, beetroot brownies and pumpkin cupcakes. See the link at the end of this post for links to some of these recipes.
- Cauliflower Mac ‘n’ Cheese: Swap out some of the pasta in your mac ‘n’ cheese with cauliflower puree. It adds creaminess and a serving of veggies without a strong flavour. Due to the cauliflower being pureed, kids won’t even notice the addition of it to the dish.
- Sweet Potato Fries: Again, these can be bought ready-prepared from the freezer aisle of any good supermarket, but they’re also pretty quick and easy to make from scratch. It might take a child a little while to get used to the switch from regular chips/fries, but they’ll soon be eating them as readily as the ones made from potatoes and may even end up preferring them.
So we’ve established there are lots of sneaky ways to hide vegetables in children’s food. But remember…
In the short term, hiding veggies in food to ensure their children are getting enough vegetables can help to put the minds at ease of parents of fussy kids. However, the ultimate goal with these children should be to encourage them to keep trying new things, including a range of vegetables in their different forms. Most vegetables have a mild flavour that isn’t too much for young taste buds, and most children will learn to love them with some time and patience (it can take a child up to seven times of trying something new before they will readily enjoy eating it). Crudities with dips, boiled or sautéed as a side dish, corn on the cob, the list goes on. Even the fussiest eaters need to be given the opportunity to keep trying new healthy foods and new textures without always relying on everything being blitzed into a puree before they will eat it. While it’s fine to do this for a limited period of time, even really fussy eaters must be offered lots of opportunities to try new foods including vegetables. Challenge children to ‘eat the rainbow’ and see if they can eat every colour in the form of new vegetables each week. Children are very unlikely to eat vegetables served in various forms and textures if the adults around them do not, which is why it’s important for adults to eat with children whenever possible.
Further links for ‘hidden vegetable’ recipes
Visit the following links for delicious recipes and bakes that include vegetables:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/garden-glut-cake-recipes
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/hidden-veg-recipes