The battle between toddlers and a plate of vegetables is as old as time. But healthy doses of vegetables can benefit your child in a number of different ways. Fresh, healthy produce results in improved nutrition, an enhanced performance at school, and a decreased risk of childhood obesity. Toddlers who are 2 to 3 years old need about 1 cup of raw or cooked vegetables per day. They help protect your child’s body against all kinds of diseases. A healthy diet means eating lots of vegetables, plus a wide variety of foods from the other main food groups.

To make sure they are having vegetables, here are some great ideas which really work –

Hide them

Chop up some veggies and throw them into an omelet. . Put some olives and tomatoes on a pizza and cover them with cheese. Sneak some veggies into rolls. You can even make some fresh salsa and serve it with chips. Boil and puree vegetables like spinach or beetroot and kneed it with wheat flour to make puri, parantha or roti. Your toddler won’t even think about the fact that he might be eating veggies! He’ll just know his dinner tastes delicious.

Offer vegetables as snacks

You can make vegetable cutlets, spring rolls or even chop veggies like carrots, peas, potato, capscicums and make vegetable stir fry. Snack like these between meals are healthy as well as refreshing and will give your toddler the right dose of vegetables.

Pair with Dips

If you can’t get our toddler to eat something, you can make some dips and chutneys like – green chutney, mayonnaise dip to go with veggies. This one is a little tricky since your toddler will obviously know he’s eating vegetables, but if he doesn’t care then this is a great way to get him to eat more veggies.

Enforce the “one bite rule”

Research consistently shows that children who have initially rejected a food must be exposed to it at least 8-10 times for the food to be accepted. Many parents have had success with the “one bite rule,” requiring the child to try at least one solid mouthful of a rejected food whenever it is served. After enough exposures the food will be more familiar to the child and usually they begin to rate it more favorably.

Farm Visit

Fresh-picked vegetables from a country farm taste a thousand times better, and they are more visually appealing than grocery store produce. Take your toddler on a farm visit, pick vegetables with him and explain him how each vegetable is grown. When you will make that some vegetable, they will want to eat it too.

Lastly, don’t give up. We all have those days where our patience seems to have met its limit, but remember that the habits you teach your child now are likely to remain with them as they progress to adulthood.