FOOD ART: Try presenting food creatively to make healthy eating fun for kids
Author of recipe books for children, Ingeborg Hanreich, borrowed a few interesting ideas from her friend and used them in her book Eating and Drinking in Infancy:
- Once a week at home pretend to be a rabbit family. Meals include salad leaves, carrots or corn on the cob that tastes so sweet and can even be eaten by hand.
- When the children help prepare broccoli and cauliflower, say they are making green and white trees.
- Sometimes it helps for the children to help you grate the vegetable or prepare it in the form of a puree, creamy soup, spaghetti sauce or as a vegetable tart. Spaghetti may be sucked up one strand at a time.
- Children can cut up peppers and cucumbers into shapes using cookie cutters.
- Pasta stars or numbers can be used to make decorations and pictures on the rim of a soup dish.
- Always decide on the weekly meal plan as a family over the weekend when everyone has an opportunity to propose their favourite recipes. Children relate better to meals they have chosen themselves. And if they helped with its preparation, they will definitely not leave it on the plate!