Conscious Parenting with Meg Brown for BodyEcology.com
Vegetables are an important part of the Body Ecology lifestyle and every healthy family’s diet. Here are four easy ways to get your kids to eat more veggies!
Do you know any children who actually enjoy eating vegetables? I am acquainted with a few. I have a niece who appears to love them – she eats almost any green leafy vegetable with a smile on her face.
One of my son’s best friends consumes baby carrots like they’re candy. And a brother-sister team from across the street routinely polish off their dinner salads before even looking at the cheeseburgers on their plates.
Perhaps they are just being polite.
Perhaps my own children, when dining at other people’s homes, also impress the resident adults by eating all the vegetables in sight. I will have to check on that.
In the meantime, vegetable consumption is sadly still a bit of an issue at our house. I have to be creative, persistent and sometimes downright sneaky to get a reasonable amount of veggies into the boys’ daily diet.
Are vegetables really that important to your family’s health?
We've all heard about the benefits of eating vegetables: they are a rich source of vitamins, minerals and fiber in our diets and may help prevent illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and several types of cancer.1
The story doesn’t stop there, however. A diet rich in vegetables is important because it supports the neutral-to-slightly-alkaline pH levels in the body that signal good health.
When poor dietary habits – and stress – lower the body’s pH levels, bones release calcium and magnesium, and muscles are broken down to produce ammonia. This restores alkalinity, but the long term effect is thinner bones and less muscle mass.2
With Body Ecology, the “Principle of 80/20” recommends filling our plates 80% with land vegetables, cultured vegetables and ocean veggies at every meal. Now we know why.
Let’s move on to the “how.” Here are 4 Easy Ways to get your kids excited about vegetables:
1. Plant a Vegetable Garden
It’s not too late to cultivate your own little patch of zucchini or field of cauliflower. Clear some space in the back yard, or create a container garden on your porch.
A family (or community) vegetable garden is a wonderful way to get kids excited about their veggies. I know that my own children are always more eager to eat something they have harvested themselves... hopefully, yours will be too.
2. Visit Your Local Farmers’ Market
Still waiting for that first zucchini to grow? Don’t despair. Make a family outing to your local farmers’ market.
Here is what you will find: A great variety of fresh, organic produce, coupled with a chance to meet and talk with the people who grow the food that shows up on your dinner table. How cool is that?
Make a game out of choosing a new vegetable to try at home each week, or let each child select their favorites.
3. Design Your Own Vegetable Smoothie
Summer is the perfect time to enjoy cool, refreshing vegetable smoothies. Break out the blender and check out the vegetable drawer in your refrigerator. What’s in there?
Try the Good Morning Greens Smoothie recipe for inspiration, then get creative. Encourage your children to design their own recipes. My kids love making smoothies for our family!
Remember to add fermented foods and drinks into your smoothies! Adding cultured vegetables or a sour, fruity flavor with a couple ounces of your favorite probiotic liquid multiplies the nutritional value of your smoothie. Probiotic-rich Innergy-Biotic is my personal favorite.
4. Test Your Family’s pH Levels
Sometimes we need a little extra motivation, or a way to measure our progress. Perhaps just a tiny bit of healthy competition is in order.
You can purchase a pH level home test kit, like this one from pHion to check your family’s pH levels. The kit includes a testing protocol to ensure accurate measurements.
Remember, the goal is to promote healthy family practices. If your test results are not all that you hoped for, create a chart to map your progress and start eating more veggies!
I probably shouldn’t mention that my children enjoy peeing on the little test strips almost as much as charting their progress on healthy eating habits.
Oops, already said it.
Recommended Products:
As already mentioned, I recommend these pH Test Strips from pHion, to help your family track their own progress towards healthy eating habits.
My all-time favorite food book (not a cook book) is The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Resource for Healthy Living, by Rebecca Wood (author of another classic and Julia Child Cookbook Awards winner, The Splendid Grain). Read about the healing properties of every vegetable and herb in your garden... and then some.
Related Posts:
Read about my adventures in gardening, in Let's Get Dirty.
Other recent articles for BodyEcology.com include, Are You and Your Family Getting Enough Vitamin D? and 5 Ways to Boost Your Child's Self-Esteem with Mindful Eating.
Sources:
1. Inside the Pyramid: Why is it important to eat vegetables? MyPyramid.Gov.
2. The pH Nutrition Guide to Acid / Alkaline Balance. NaturalNews.com
My daughter loves almost any vegetable, but I still find myself trying to add more to our diet. A friend told me about adding raw spinach to smoothies to boost the amount of vegetable servings per day that we consume. It's a great idea! You have to be sure to use baby spinach because the regular spinach will add an ashey flavor to the drink. I put about 2 cups into our smoothies or ice cream shakes. Blend well. Aside from creating a green hue, the spinach is undetectable in the drink! You can even sneak a serving of vegetables into your husband!
Posted by: Ruth | July 08, 2009 at 09:40 AM