If you want to do more to encourage your kids to engage with food and healthy eating, it all starts with making dinner more fun. Rather than it being a chore for them to eat the foods they don’t like, you should see if you can make it more interesting for them, while still keeping things healthy. Here are some of the tactics you might want to employ if you want to do that.
Cook with a Theme
When you approach cooking and meal prep for the family with a theme in mind, it becomes a lot easier for you to make the whole thing pretty fun and interesting, and that’s the way it should be. You could cook dishes that are relevant to that theme or even host a get-together with the friends of your child and make a party scenario with games and fancy dress.
Be Creative with Your Cooking
Being creative with your cooking will get your children more interested in food. If you’re always putting the same dishes in front of them that they’re not particularly keen to eat, there’s not going to be any excitement or engagement for them there. You want them to grow up with a love of food and healthy eating, and to do that, you sometimes need to be creative.
Dine Outdoors When You Can
Dining outdoors can be a great way to make mealtimes more fun and interesting too. That’s why you should invest in a great set of garden furniture pieces and an outdoor dining table. That way, you’ll always be able to make the most of those warm summer evenings when it’s much more appealing to dine outdoors with the family.
Get the Kids Involved in Baking and Cooking
Getting the children involved in the cooking process is the perfect way to get them interested in food and cooking. They’ll understand it more from a hands-on perspective, and most kids love getting messy in the kitchen. You first of all might want to improve your own cooking skills with FBOI culinary courses and then pass on what you learn to your kids. Cooking is always a beneficial skill for your kids to possess going forward.
Use Meal Times as a Chance to Catch Up with Each Other
Meal times are not just about the food; they’re a chance for you all to catch up and socialize with one another. You can discuss what each of you have been doing that day, and allows you to stay connected even when different members of the family are leading busy lives of their own. Families always need that time together amid the chaos.
Family meal time doesn’t have to be dull and boring day after day. As the ideas above prove, you can make the whole process much more exciting, and get your kids more interested in food prep and healthy eating at the same time. So what’s not to like? Try these ideas out for yourself.