Are you one of millions of parents that have to bribe their kids to eat their veggies?  Maybe you sneak spinach puree into the brownies? Getting your kid to eat green things (and I don't mean M & M's!) can be impossible or easy, depending on how you approach it when they first start eating.  While I may not have the answer to how to get a 10 year old who's never eaten veggies to suddenly like them, I do know that there are simple steps you can take from the very beginning to guarantee that your kids make healthy food choices without a fight.  Giving your child the gift of healthy eating habits is one of the greatest things you can do as a parent to help them achieve their highest potential.

1.  Modeling Is The Most Important Thing You Can Do

Modeling healthy behavior is the single most important thing you can do to inspire your kids to make healthy choices themselves. As they begin to make sense of the world around them, they look to us to learn how to act in the world.  When they see us parents enjoying broccoli, spinach, and even blue-green algae, they figure they might as well enjoy it too!  Eating together as a family is important for many reasons, one of them being the modeling factor.

Margo Bachman* is an Ayurvedic practitioner and yoga instructor who oversees Dr. David Frawley's Ayurvedic Healing Course. As a mother, she says:

I find that the only way to inspire healthy eating with children is to model that yourself. We are our children's first teachers and they look to us for guidance and clues all the time, including how to eat. Healthy eating is paramount in our family and I am highly committed to our nutrition. When I gobble up sauteed kale and lick my lips my daughter wants to do the same. It also helps to discover the tastes that your children love and incorporate them into their foods. I may add another spray of tamari to her kale because I know she will finish it with a little extra salt. Experiment and discover together!  Try this kale recipe:

Steam 1 bunch kale until soft but still vibrant green. Remove from
steamer and let sit for 1 minute to cool. Dress with flax seed oil,
tamari, a splash of umeboshi plum vinegar and small squeeze of lemon.
Toss greens in mixture so all have a nice light coating and eat warm.

2.  Grow Your Food As A Family

Involving kids in growing some food is an amazing activity for their entire development.  Get their hands dirty! What kid doesn't love that? Even if you only have a small backyard, it's possible to have a small garden. Even if it's a few pots in a sunny window, you can grow some herbs and lettuces. Kids love to be a part of the action, and when they see the plants grow from seed to carrot, they are bound to want to pull that thing up and eat it.  Freshly harvested vegetables are not only more fun, they're more nutritious and more delicious!  Kids can't help but appreciate the miracle of nature that grows a huge broccoli plant from one little seed.

3.  Cook Together

Just as kids want to be part of the growing process, kids also want to help in the kitchen. Sure it might take a little longer to get breakfast ready when your 3 year old is cracking the eggs, but that kid will be psyched to eat the meal he or she helped to make!  Kids feel pride in preparing meals just as they do in coloring a picture. They want to show it off and enjoy it with everyone.  It's easy to put the kids, even the very little ones, on a stool beside you while you're preparing a meal. They can stir, mush, and blend with the best of 'em.

4.  Keep The Junk Out Of The House

When there's no junk food in the house, your kids can't ask for it and you don't have to keep saying no!  Even a two year old can open the cabinet and try to get the BBQ potato chips.  Once they've had them, they're going to throw a fit if you say no the next time. It's just too hard to keep things in the house that you don't want them to have, and then to try to limit when the kids can have them. It's much easier as a parent if the junk just isn't there at all.

I tried to never serve my kids anything that I thought they would eventually choose over a healthy meal. For example, after macaroni n cheese, what kid is going to choose the veggie stir fry?  Some kids eat only mac n cheese for 5 years!  It's a slippery slope, and one that's hard to recover from.  When every meal at home is a healthy meal, that's what the kids are going to eat. Sure mine have other things from time to time when we're out, and at birthday parties. That's fine with me, on occasion. But they know that at home, we all eat the same nutritious thing together. That's normal for them because we've made healthy eating the norm from the start.

The Gift Of Healthy Habits

Inspiring our kids to eat healthy is one of the greatest gifts we can give them as parents.  Healthy eating habits are crucial to a child's mental, emotional, and physical development.  Without proper nutrition, our kids can develop learning disabilities, behavioral problems, weight and self-esteem issues, and physical illnesses.  Without proper nutrition, our kids can't achieve their highest potential.  It's as simple as that.

I hope this post inspires you to follow these 4 simple steps from the day your child starts eating solid food and for all the years after that.  If you do, you won't be fighting with your 7 year old in a restaurant someday about whether or not he can just order french fries for lunch!  I believe kids, even very young ones, can understand the importance of good health to grow bigger, and to be strong and smart.  They're never too young to make the connection between feeling good and eating well!  It just needs to be emphasized, modeled, and enforced.

Please leave a comment below to share your experiences with inspiring healthy eating habits with your family!

*Check out Margo Bachman's wonderful Ayurvedic herbal products at http://www.heartofwellness.com