wilkes

9 ways to help a picky eater
#1. Have Your Child Medically Evaluated It could be that there is something medically wrong. Knowing this will not help you get more fruits and veggies into his system. But it will help you know how to approach the problem.
#2. Avoid a Power Struggle You cannot force your child to eat anything. Ultimately, in the end, it is he who chooses whether or not to swallow. Telling your child they must sit there and eat it until it's gone won't work. (Note: This is one distinction between the picky and the seriously picky eater. This strategy will work for the normal picky eater.)
What we have always done is allowed our daughter to choose between some reasonable options after dinner if she didn't want what was being served. Not only that but she had to sit at the dinner table with us and watch us eat. This has had the advantage of encouraging her to try a few new foods here and there when she's really hungry. Now that she's older, we ask that she take care of making her own food (if necessary) as well as cleaning it up.
#3. Embrace the Advice of Mary Poppins Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. . . I'm not advocating feeding your kids tons of sugar here. I am merely pointing out that in the case of the seriously picky eater, you can use a little sugar to help coax a try. Try covering something with applesauce, honey (for toddlers only), and yes, even some brown sugar. (You can use plan old granulated sugar if need be too but brown sugar is "healthier" if you can describe sugar as healthy.) Freeze a fruit with a little sugar to make popsicles. Try mixing fruit or veggies into a milkshake! Don't ever give your kids sugar without any redeeming nutritional value. (Even ice cream is a great source of calcium!)
#4. Pass the condiments please! Ketchup and lettuce? Hey, whatever works with these seriously picky eaters is worth the effort. B-B-Q sauce, mustard, ketchup, honey, peanut butter--you name it! Be careful with both honey and peanut butter--consult your pediatrician first before offering these foods. In most cases, it is fine to offer either to children older than a year.
#5. Juice It! You'd be surprised what kids will drink but won't eat. It's a texture thing. Even my daughter, by-the-way, will drink V-8 splash. One glass of that counts as a serving of fruits & veggetables.
It's important when you're looking at juices to make sure that it doesn't have a ton of sugar and is 100% real juice. You may also want to consider a juicing machine if you think you'll use it. We love ours and make all sorts of interesting and kid friendly things out of it. (Carrot soda anyone?)
#6. Maximize the Nutritional Value of What He Will Eat So your little one will only eat mac 'n cheese? So find a home made recipe that he'll eat. Even if you have to buy the cheese sauce, you can still use whole wheat pasta. So he'll only eat sandwiches? Find the best multi-grain bread you can, use peanut butter without sugar--whatever it takes. Chicken nuggets? Make them from scratch so your kid is eating real chicken instead of "processed chicken parts". Do the best you can to cut down on the processed foods your child will eat.
#7. Keep trying It is o.k. to repeatedly offer foods and it is o.k. for your child to repeatedly refuse them. Especially if the issue is medical, or even if your child just has an overly sensitive gag reflex, or is sensitive to texture--getting over it will take some time. My daughter gets her eating issues from my husband, who according to my mother-in-law, was almost 13 before he started to grow out of gagging on his food.
#8. Don't create pickiness by your attitude Have you always cut the crusts off of bread for your child, or had to have your own food just so? Your kids pick up on your attitudes and it only makes things worse. Remember that just because you don't like a food--doesn't mean that your child won't. Case in point: my husband and I both hate lima beans. I cannot think of a grosser thing to cook for dinner. Then one day, while my children were at gardening class, they got to pick some lima beans fresh from the garden. Proud of their booty, they wanted me to fix them for dinner. Guess what? They like them! Who knew? My face cringes even as I write this. But the point is: don't assume your kids won't like something just because you won't. You just never know.
#9. Sneak it in. You can grind up all manner of green vegetables and add them to the batter. Spinach biscuits anyone? Rutabega pancakes? Carrots especially, are suitable for grinding up and sneaking into things because they are naturally sweet, as are rutabagas. You'd think they'd notice some ground up spinach. . .but they don't. My seriously picky eater doesn't like hamburgers, but I have a friend who grinds up broccoli and spinach and adds it to her hamburger mixture. You totally can't even tell it's in there! And yes, it still counts--even though it's ground up.

Try frying up some green beans like they do at Fridays restaurant. I think they dip them in breading and deep fry them. Let him dip them in ranch dressing. They are delicious.

my kids have never been too picky when it came to veggies but my ex was, i used to process them really fine and add it to meatloaf, spaghetti, etc and he never knew any different lol

I hope this will help a little ,ouer kids would'nt eat any veggies and we did this and it helped.
1 slice Bologna (fried on 1 side so it makes a cup)
add mashed potatos in cup ,hollow out a hole in the middle of the potatos and add some peas or carrots ,maybe stick some uncut green beans under the bologna cup to mimic firewood and tell them it's a inside cookout..
The beans are the wood ,the bologna is the pot and so on.
I hope it will help.

Does anyone know of a good way to get my son to eat some veggies maybe a recipe. If he thinks they are there he wont eat them.