Are you trying to get your kids to eat real food? As a mum to four, I totally get the struggle – it is daily! And in this post, I’m looking at ways to bring more real food for kids to your table. Together, we’re going to find out ways to help your kids eat healthy (most of the time!) and develop a positive relationship with food.
This article gives 12 tips on how to get your kids to eat real food. Because I know how busy parents are and understand that eating healthily can take more time, I’ve also suggested 6 ways to save you time in the kitchen. I’ve also given some useful alternatives to ultra-processed foods (UPFs) for kids.
Maybe you already eat healthily, but have a picky eater who won’t join in family meals. In which case, your job is to continue serving healthy meals while using gentle nudge tactics to improve your child’s eating habits (more of these in a moment).
Or perhaps, like me, you struggle to eat healthily yourself. There are so many reasons for this. And this post isn’t about preaching to you what you should or shouldn’t be eating. Because oftentimes, food prices and busy lifestyles determine our eating habits. But if you’re reading this post and you want to bring about change, I can help you with that. I’ve struggled with it myself and with my 4 children.
I’m talking about the 80% of the time when we’re really looking to nourish our kids, that is the family meals around the table, and their packed lunches.
What Is Real Food for Kids?
Of course, all food is real – even ultra-processed foods. But real food for kids is about seeking out honest food that nourishes our bodies and has the lowest level of processing:
- Real food has a healthy aspect or healthy benefit.
- It has as little processing as possible, but it could still be processed or combined with unprocessed foods to strike a balance between healthy and convenient.
- It could be local, organic, or sustainable.
- Real food should always be enjoyable.
- It could be made together at home.
- Real food helps you feel good about the choices you’re making.
In my mind, it’s unrealistic to demonise foods, food types, and food groups. After all, life with kids can be unpredictable and it’s often hard work. The odd takeaway or processed meal can save our sanity and these foods can be fun!
Why Bother Getting Kids to Eat Real Food?
It goes without saying that real food nourishes our children’s bodies. A balanced intake of foods meets their nutritional needs to help them grow strong and well.
Real food helps kids to maintain a healthy body weight and BMI. It fuels their body for play, and their brains for learning.
Developing healthy eating habits at a young age helps your kids to stay healthy and avoid chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.
Moreover, it helps them to learn where foods come from, farming, and production methods. They can learn the social importance of food.
Importantly, they can develop a lifelong love of healthy eating and a healthy relationship with food, avoiding eating disorders and food obsessions.
So let’s get right into it – here’s how to get kids to eat more real food.
How To Get Kids To Eat Real Food – 12 Top Tips
1. Be a Good Role Model
Do you model good eating habits and healthy eating to your kids? Are you a picky eater? Do you depend on convenience food too much because it’s safe? It’s wise to know where your weaknesses surrounding food lie, and to allow your family some grace if you find some lifestyle patterns and foods hard to manage.
Think back to your childhood. Were mealtimes stressful? Did you struggle with particular foods or food groups? Did certain textures upset you? It can be helpful to journal these experiences, and if you need to, reach out for professional help from an occupational therapist.
2. Go Slowly
Adults and children alike – nobody wants to change suddenly. It’s best to go slowly and introduce changes to your family’s diet gradually.
Incorporating new foods alongside familiar foods is a great way to ease your kids into new foods and dishes. Keep a food diary for a few weeks – especially if you struggle with healthy eating yourself. This will help you to pinpoint any areas you’d like to improve on. You can use a meal plan to help bring your goals into reality.
3. Keep a Solid Routine
If your kiddos are snacking too much, they’re going to have no inclination to eat real food. Keep snack times and meal times consistent to make sure they come to the table ready to eat and hungry.
4. Bring Back Tasty
There’s a misconception that healthy food isn’t tasty, however you can prioritise fresh and vibrant ingredients to bring better quality and taste to your plate.
It’s helpful to use palatable ingredients including fats to your family meals. Fats like butter, peanut butter, and olive and coconut oils, all make foods taste better and are essential parts of our diet when eaten in moderation. Use stock, seasonings, spices, and vinegar to add flavour. You can also use a variety of different cooking methods like pan searing, grilling, steaming, poaching, and stewing.
Remember that you and your child’s palate will change in response to the variety you introduce to it.
5. Understand Your Kids
It can be helpful to understand why kids can be picky eaters. My autistic son would happily eat chicken nuggets every day, and shies away from new foods. On the other hand, my daughter will gladly try new things. The struggle of getting kids to eat real food is unique to your family and its needs. And, if like us, you have neurodivergent kids in the house, it can become even harder.
Building on what your kids do like is a great idea. Maybe they like tuna wraps, for instance. So the next time you make tuna wraps, try tuna and sweetcorn wraps. Just try one small change at a time, and see if your kids enjoy any of these new variations.
Remember the division of responsibility: it’s up to you what you serve, but it’s up to them what they eat. You can do no more. Persuasion, coercion, bribes, and rewards generally lead to power struggles that will backfire. Just keep on offering real foods!
Here are some tips on helping your picky eater.
6. Get Your Kids Involved
Eating real food means experimenting with meals and trying new things, and since kids are actually great at adapting and learning, get them on board! This could be anything from meal planning and shopping, to cooking a meal from scratch – like these turkey meatballs (with your help, of course).
For example you could sit with your kids and talk about their favourite foods and meals and why eating for nourishment is important. Involving kids in shopping and meal planning is a great way to get kids invested in what they eat way before the cooking even starts.
7. Keep Nutritious Snacks Handy
All parents know that kids love to snack. So make nutritious snacks available to them. Try some of these snacks:
- A fruit bowl stocked with their favourites
- Chopped veggies such as carrots and peppers
- Prepared fruit and nut butters
- Cubed cheese
- Shredded chicken
- Nuts (if your child is old enough) and dried fruit
- Hard boiled eggs
- Greek yogurt
- Homemade popcorn with a small amount sugar and salt
- Mini muffins made with banana instead of added sugar
I’m sure there are many more you can add to this list of snacks based on your children’s preferences.
8. Make Food Fun
I’m not just talking about making faces with food, although that is fun! Here are some more ideas for bringing fun to mealtimes:
- Buy them a chopping set so they can help you in the kitchen.
- Have them choose and make their own nutritious pizzas with colourful toppings.
- Create a salad bar with healthful items and a couple of unexpected treat items.
- Let them write out a menu and serve each other.
- Try a kids cooking course, cooking book or similar.
- Let kids serve themselves from the table.
- Have dips such as salsa, yogurt, and tahini at the table – they’re so much fun!
The key here is interactivity. The more kids get involved with their food, the more likely they are to try and enjoy new things.
9. Homemade Versions of their Processed Favourites
Kids seem to gravitate towards foods that are beige, bland and processed. But why is this? Undoubtedly, we’re all programmed to enjoy sweet and salty foods for good reason, as these foods would typically help us to survive longer.
Not to mention, there’s a great deal of marketing involved in snack foods aimed at kids.
Children, especially neurodivergent children, are often trying to seek out predictability – so they’ll frequently choose foods like chicken nuggets over other more nutritious foods, as they can be sure what they’re going to get foods that are safe to them. Ask your kids what kinds of food they find safe. It’s an interesting exercise!
Kids also have an undeveloped palette. To this end, the more they try things, the better. Eventually they will feel more comfortable with foods they originally didn’t enjoy.
Because of this, your kids will thank you for making homemade versions of their processed, shop-bought favourites, ready meals, or “fakeaways”. They’ll only eat chicken nuggets? Batch cook your own homemade chicken nuggets, and make enough for a few weeks and freeze them.
Indeed, foods like pizza, stir fry, burgers, chicken nuggets, are all great candidates.
10. Be Aware of Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs)
It might surprise you to learn that many foods are processed, for instance pasta and bread are considered processed foods. But these foods are deemed important by the NHS and other medical establishments, especially when choosing wholegrain varieties.
Every parent wants to avoid so-called “ultra-processed” foods the majority of the time. These are foods that have unpronounceable ingredients that you wouldn’t find in your own kitchen. The dangers of ultra-processed foods are gradually coming to light.
However, even the most lowly of processed foods have some value, even if it’s just energy and convenience. Nobody wants their kids to eat these as their staple diet, but there’s no shame in falling back on these foods when you need to.
How to spot UPFs? Find them wrapped in plastic and often containing one or more ingredients you won’t have in your kitchen.
Here are some UPF foods that kids love and their less processed alternatives:
- Sweetened Yogurt:
- Swap sweetened yogurt for Greek yogurt with fruit or compote made at home.
- Breakfast Cereals:
- Choose oats or minimally processed cereals like corn flakes and bran flakes. Weetabix is considered a UPF, however many kids enjoy it and it’s lower in sugar and salt than other choices.
- Packaged Bread:
- It’s so hard to avoid bread. Most kids love it, and it’s an easy option to make sandwiches. One way to bring variety to sandwiches and make them more nutritious is to switch up the fillings. You can also seek out minimally processed bread – wholemeal bread, oat bread, and sourdough bread are good options. You could also consider making your own bread in a bread machine.
- Cereal Bars, Biscuits and Cookies:
- Make some homemade energy balls, biscuits, cookies, or flapjacks made with less sugar.
- Fizzy Drinks and Squash:
- Choose sugar-free versions to minimise the impact on sugar intake and dental health. You can also try adding chopped fruit and cucumber to water.
- Chocolate and Sweets:
- Although dark chocolate is not considered a UPF, it’s often too strong for kids. Chocolate and sweets are fun and can be eaten as part of a balanced diet. Homemade fruit popsicles are a good way to satisfy a sweet tooth. Indulge in frozen banana chunks or grapes, or fresh smoothies made from yummy fruit. Although high in sugar, they have a good nutritional content and some fibre.
- Crisps:
- If you’re trying to minimise crisp consumption, try plain rice cakes, or plain popcorn.
Sometimes, only a donut or a bag of crisps will do, so remember to include these fun foods occasionally.
11. Try Switching Up Timings
Switching your kids to real food can be all about timings. If you can nail breakfast and lunch time, don’t sweat too much about serving perfect balanced dinners. Many kids are tired come dinner time, and it might not be the best time to try out new foods. Instead, make sure they’ve had a good breakfast, and a good dinner, and serve up nutritious snack type meals at dinner time to avoid meal time battles.
Similarly with trying new foods. If you serve them up at breakfast or lunch time, your kids might be more inclined to try them rather than at dinner time, when they’re getting tired and ready to wind down for the day.
12. Try Not to Label Food As Healthy or Unhealthy
Have you noticed your school asking kids to label foods as either healthy or unhealthy? Depending on their age, when talking to your kids about eating for health, try to steer your kids away from labelling foods as healthy or unhealthy. Current research is revealing that this way of labelling foods can be damaging. Unfortunately, it can lead to feelings of guilt and shame and foster an unhealthy relationship with food. It misses the wider point of look at a child’s diet in general. It’s important that kids know that all foods are okay within the scope of a healthy diet and in balance.
How To Save Time In The Kitchen
As a parent, you’re probably already stretched a thousand ways every day thanks to the demands of your kids, your job, and managing your household.
There’s a misconception that eating real food takes a lot of work, and while it’s true that extra work is involved, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Eating real food simply comes down to extra planning, and additional effort in the kitchen. Yet, the payback is huge. Your kids will be fuelled for their busy lives, and you’ll be eating well, too. They’ll also be learning healthy habits for life.
There’s no doubt that eating real food means more time in the kitchen for parents. Here’s how you can make it easier.
1. Meal Planning – Your Secret Weapon!
Meal planning is your secret weapon in eating real food. In our house, we sit down every week and work out what to eat. This means we can all have a say and we can make sure we balance out different types of food across all the days. It takes the pain out of choosing what to eat every single day and reduces the chances of falling back on too many processed foods.
Shopping and prepping is easier too, and many parents save money and waste less food when they start meal planning. A meal plan eliminates the need for top-up shops when those unexpected snack items end up in the shopping cart!
Involving your kids in this plan, and keeping it some place that everybody can see, keeps everybody invested.
2. Meal Prep to Save Time
Meal prep makes eating real food a breeze because it reduces the amount of time you need to spend in the kitchen. For instance, you can batch cook, portion out meals, prep frequently used ingredients, and make quick meals that can be grabbed on the go, reducing your reliance on less nutritious processed alternatives.
3. Leftovers Life Hack
Using leftovers in creative ways is a great way to eat more real food. For instance, Sunday’s roast chicken can be turned into chicken and veggie omelette the next day. Making double or triple of something in your meal and saving it for leftovers can save you a ton of time cooking.
4. Making Use of the Freezer
Taking advantage of the freezer can bring big gains for eating well. Frozen soups, stews, and smoothies can be defrosted in no time for speedy meals. Homemade frozen desserts are a huge hit in our house! You can freeze the results of your meal prepping and your leftovers, saving you lots of time in the week.
Additionally, frozen veggies and fruit are just as nutritious as their fresh counterparts.
The freezer can also help you limit consumption of things you know will get eaten right away. In my house, that’s flapjacks and muffins.
5. Using Canned or Jarred Foods
Canned and jarred foods can be just as nutritious and can save a lot of time, so don’t dismiss them! For instance, canned tomatoes are so versatile. Using canned beans, lentils, and fish can save the time it takes to prepare these ingredients. Canned and jarred foods are great to have on standby too – you will never run out of something tasty to create.
6. Get Help from Family & Friends
If you can, ask your family members or friends to help you with meal prep and batch cooking. Grandparents will love making a real casserole for you to pop in the oven on a busy weeknight, or baking homemade treats with the kids. What could be more wholesome?
Final thoughts on Real Food for Kids
Getting your kids to eat real food takes some thought, planning, and extra time in the kitchen, but it’s so worth it! You will be setting them up for a lifetime of good health, and encouraging a healthy relationship with food.
How do you help your kids eat better? Let me know in the comments! And remember to follow me on Facebook or subscribe to my blog for more like this.
Until next time!
Helen
