Food and Your Family: Healthy Food That Everyone Will Eat!

The right nutrition keeps us healthy.  It protects us against disease, enables us to stay at a healthy weight and gives us the energy we need to enjoy life. But sometimes, getting everyone in the family to eat healthy meals can be a struggle. Today’s post is about ways you can get around this!

FIND INSPIRATION ONLINE

Children (or even some adults!) might not necessarily eat a bunch of vegetables if they are just heaped on their plate. The best way to get your family to eat healthy food is to make it interesting. If you’re serving up boring dishes (or those that heavily feature ingredients they’re not keen on- i.e.: veggies) then you’re going to have a battle at every dinner. Find inspiration online for meals that are healthy and genuinely tasty. Pinterest is full of ideas, or search hashtags on Instagram. Another thing you could try is using a meal kit service. By comparing Sun Basket and Blue Apron you can see that both meal kit services offer a range of healthy and family friendly recipes. You don’t even need to buy the kit!  You could always just take inspiration from the recipes and buy the ingredients for them yourself.

SNEAK IN VEGGIES

You don’t need to battle and bribe your family to get healthy food into them. It’s surprisingly easy to sneak all kinds of veggies into meals, in a very inconspicuous way. Perfect for even the fussiest of eaters! Once you have your inspiration dishes, you could always tailor them to add more nutrition. When you want to cook with style and ease, you may need a little help. A food processor can provide exactly the type of assistance required. For example, you no longer have to worry about sloppy knife cutting when you have a food processing device at your disposal. It chops anything into the size you need in seconds. That includes everything from turning coffee beans into a fine powder to dicing an onion to add to a soup. Whatever food you need to dice or grind, the food processor can quickly do it for you. That leaves you more time to enjoy your culinary creations. 

Mix them together and you bulk up your meat in a way that will save you money, save on calories and is packed with nutrition! Foods like mushrooms, carrot, courgette and peppers all work well here. Once everything is mixed together with the meat, sauce and seasonings it’s very hard to detect those healthy veggies. Start small, and gradually add more and more! Things like cooked lentils can also be added to ground meat, which don’t have a strong taste and tend to blend in seamlessly. Lentils are packed with nutrition, fiber and are extremely cheap. Spinach is another easy veggie to sneak in, as it is mild in flavor and cooks down dramatically so masses of spinach can be incorporated into things like pasta dishes.

EAT TOGETHER

Eating together as a family is so important as it keeps bonds close. As your kids grow up they spend all day at school and you and your partner may spend all day at work. An evening dinner gets you all back together and a chance to catch up and chat. Children that eat regular meals with their family are less likely to be obese, generally, as they are eating healthy, home cooked meals. It’s an opportunity for your kids to see you filling up on fresh, delicious ingredients. Something their behavior will hopefully mirror in time.  If mom eats her green beans, little Johnnie may be more apt to dig into his too!

One of my favorite healthy, easy family-friendly recipes here on the blog for dinner is my Healthy Crockpot Chicken.  It is great eaten on top of salad or make a taco bar and let the kids have fun making their own tacos!

So there you have it….some quick and easy tips on how to eat healthy together as a family!

XOXO,

Kelly