Here are some tips on how to introduce more vegetables to your child’s diet. Remember: if you try one (or all) of these suggestions it’s important that you try them over and over again. The more a child is exposed to vegetables, the more likely they’ll start eating them.

* Try lots of different green vegetables prepared in different ways. Will your child be more likely to eat broccoli if there’s a dip that accompanies it? How about eating broccoli in a soup? What about sprinkled with parmesan cheese? Maybe your child would prefer broccoli roasted instead of boiled.

* What about other green vegetables? If your child likes crunchy foods, fresh green beans or snow and/or sugar snap peas or crunchy lettuce might be good alternatives.

* When introducing any new food, it’s OK if your child starts by taking pea-sized bites. Get excited, and even consider a reward when they increase the quantity of a previously avoided food.

* Have you looked at your own vegetable eating habits? When you serve vegetables, do they look appealing? Are you eating the same vegetables all the time or are you adding variety? Remember, children learn by watching others, and how you eat vegetables can strongly influence your child’s vegetable eating habits.

* Be prepared for the possibility that your child’s preferences for vegetables may be different from yours. Vegetables that taste bitter and sour to you may be tasty and savory to them. Even though you’ve never been a Brussels sprout fan, your child might love their crunchy, earthy taste.

* Encourage your child to describe how any new vegetable or food tastes with descriptive words like slippery, crunchy, mushy, chewy, sweet, sour. Discourage other descriptive words like yucky, gross and other non-printable words. Make a game of seeing who can come up with the most descriptive words. Does it seem that your child prefers mushy textures? Then more mushy vegetables it is!

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