How do you "trick" your family into eating healthy?

I am in charge of the grocery buying. I don't buy junk foods. If they are hungry, they will eat what has been prepared/provided.

I refuse to provide food to them that is garbage. It's not all about weight loss, it's also about learning healthy eating early in life so your kids won't be grownups trying to learn it for the first time like I was, like so many people here are.

mmm, i love frozen grapes!

I sneak chopped up veggies into just about everything. When I am making pasta, I put carrots, red peppers, celery, and onion into the food processor and use that as the base before adding the tomatoes. I use whole wheat pasta instead of regular, and buy ground turkey and turkey bacon instead of the regular versions. I keep tons of fruits and veggies in the house for snacks. My daughter loves any kind of dip, so I will give her hummus or peanut butter to dip her fruits and veggies in.

I have had good luck with kids (not my own) and roasted veggies. Especially if I cut zuchinni and summer squash into "veggie fingers."

My nieces and nephews will pretty much eat what is offered to them. My partner's nieces and nephews are a little pickier, but they all ate at least some of their veggies this way.

Just tell them they can't eat the healthy stuff because it is for your diet and they will eat it all gone. At least that is how it works in my house. LOL

I've just slowly brought mine over to the dark side. For example; several years ago I began milling my own flour and baking all of our bread. We already made all other baked goods from scratch but this was the last bastion to fall. Homemade bread from freshly milled flour is so amazing I had no issues from the family when we made the switch. Over the course of time I slowly started replacing some of the white flour with whole wheat flour in other baked goods. Now the kids feel that cookies made with white flour are "pasty and gross!"

Smoothies are another way of sneaking in the good stuff. We do green smoothies with a base of spinach, kale, broccoli, chard or lettuce and then add fruit, sometimes yogurt, flax seed, chia seed, nuts, rocks, twigs, small woodland creatures...you get the idea. You can hide a lot of stuff in a smoothie! Same with soup! My husband says I practice "vegetable subterfuge" and I do! One day someone was talking about rutabagas and he commented that he'd never had one. "Oh yes he has" I declared! "Several times in fact!" He just shook his head in defeat.

I don't buy cereal, crackers, chips, pop, boxed foods and try to steer clear of as much processed stuff as possible. If it's not in its natural state then any processing it goes through needs to happen in my kitchen (the bread for example.) My kids complained a bit when I took away cereal but they've gotten used to things and I did make them whole grain pancakes and waffles to ease the transition. We just slowly started phasing out the nasty syrup for fruit, real whipping cream on occasion or natural sweeteners/fruit purees as toppings.

They love fresh fruit and raw veggies. Salads are a big hit here and we make a lot of our own salad dressings. They LOVE quinoa. My kids range in age from 7 to 17 and my husband is (was) picky. When I met him he'd never tasted broccoli! In fact, the only vegetables he'd ever had was canned corn and canned green beans. :noway:

My way of eating isn't limited to weight loss (though that is obviously a goal.) I want to be healthy and I don't understand when people eat healthy but then buy the junk for their families. Isn't that just setting our kids up for weight issues later in life too? Or disease? It's my desire to start my kids out healthy, change the bad habits I'd already instilled in them and teach them about good nutrition and healthy attitudes toward food so they can avoid their parent's issues later in life. But one thing I've had to keep in mind is that just because I'm gung ho doesn't mean they're right there with me yet. So I subtly change things and don't cut out everything they love, just limit it or replace it with something healthy.

I bake and decorate cakes as a hobby (in fact I'm kind of procrastinating right this moment as I should be in there putting together a cake for our 4-H club's picnic tomorrow!) My family has come to expect some seriously decadent desserts and they get them, occasionally. My son let me experiment on his birthday cake this year (with the promise that we'd go get ice cream if it was nasty.) I made him a chocolate cake that had no flour and no sugar. It was made with black beans and Xylitol and Stevia. It had sliced strawberries in the layers and had buttercream frosting. You know what? The family loved it! It wasn't exactly like a regular flour, sugar type cake but it was good! The cake I'm about to go work on is really bad though with all the traditional fat and sugar in it. But it's going to a group gathering and we won't be eating more than one little piece so I'm okay with it. When I do make cakes at home I use a small 6" cake pan so there isn't much.

I think I'm rambling and writing a novel so I'll stop now. :bigsmile:

I don't think you should. My girls are raised and gone, but when raising them I just told them that I was not going to feed them food that was not good for them. I wasn't crazy about it, we had desserts and unhealthy food occasionally but it was clear that those were treats. I was the parent. That was my job.

This isn't really a trick, but I have a small vegetable garden and some fruit trees. My 3 year old isn't very cooperative when it comes to eating her veggies at dinner. However, I was amazed to discover that if we go out to the garden to pick fruits and veggies together, they all go straight from the garden into her mouth! Spinach, kale, green beans, carrots, tomatoes, plums, oranges...if she picks it, she eats it.

This isn't really a trick, but I have a small vegetable garden and some fruit trees. My 3 year old isn't very cooperative when it comes to eating her veggies at dinner. However, I was amazed to discover that if we go out to the garden to pick fruits and veggies together, they all go straight from the garden into her mouth! Spinach, kale, green beans, carrots, tomatoes, plums, oranges...if she picks it, she eats it.

Us too!! I love gardening with my children! Besides just simply NOT buying junk food, we have started gardening as a family. We are having a blast watching everything grow! I think that is wonderful and so happy you daughter is getting her veggies! Victory!