It’s not always easy coming up with a healthy snack for kids. Especially when you need to do it a couple times each day, every day. Even if you find the perfect snack, they seem to get tired of it too soon.
I’ve found that healthy snacks are often simple and not expensive. It’s easy to give them a pop tart or anything else convenient and sugary that you know they will eat with no hesitation. My theory is that if I don’t buy things like pop tarts, they won’t ever make it to the table. As the one who usually does the grocery shopping and meal planning in my family, I get to choose what food comes inside our home, and ultimately inside our bodies. Big responsibility, huh? There are some exceptions, like if your kids eat snacks at their friend’s house or if another family member buys not-so-healthy food and shares. Or if I forget to eat before going grocery shopping. You get the idea.
My son loves orange juice. He used to like eating oranges when he was 1.5 years old, but I think he got grossed out at the texture or stringiness between the orange sections and has not really eaten oranges for the past year. Today I took off all the peels and cut the orange slices into bite-sized pieces for him. It was a sticky job and he would not try a single one. It sure can be frustrating when you spend all that extra time and energy preparing food for those picky eaters and they still refuse to even taste it.
So anyway, I thought maybe he would at least try one tiny bite of orange if it just had a toothpick sticking out of it, and he did! And he liked it and continued eating ALL of the little bites of orange I had prepared for him. And I’m almost positive he would have eaten just about anything else on his plate using that toothpick if there was anything else. I did not even have to ask him to take a bite. Once he saw the toothpick he picked it up and went to town. It was great!
Now when people suggest making food more fun to eat so that your kids will be more likely to eat it, remember that using a toothpick is a very easy, inexpensive and healthy way to do it. 🙂