Picky Eaters: Tips For Parents To Make Sure Kids Eat Healthy; 5 Interesting Lunch Ideas That Won't Fail

Picky eaters: Deciding what to pack for your kids' lunch can be a task if your child is a picky eater. Feeding a nutritious and wholesome meal is something that every parent wants. Parents must ensure that kids' lunch is packed with nutrition and is a balanced-meal. The trick is to make a few replacements, additions and colours to a regular meal and make the food somehow appealing for kids. In one of her recent posts on Instagram, nutritionist Nmami Aggarwal shares a few healthy lunch ideas for kids, especially if they are picky eaters.

Heathy lunch ideas for kids who are picky eaters

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Simple tips like replacing white bread with multigrain bread or adding leafy green vegetables to the roti dough can add nutrition to the meal.

Here are some tips for parents to make sure kids' meals are nutritious

1. Around the age of 5 or 6, children begin to form likes or dislikes. Parents should work towards accepting their preference, while continuing to introduce new food by giving them nutritional knowledge.

2. Parents can play games like quizzing them about why that particular food is good for their health.

Parents should add a variety of colourful foods to their kids' plate
Photo Credit: iStock

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3. Kids tend to dislike certain vegetables and parents must refrain from force-feeding kids. They can instead hide those vegetables by changing their texture or flavour and then serve it. For instance, if they don't like particular vegetable, you can make tikkis out of it and add colours to it by adding beetroot (for red colour), turmeric (for yellow colour) and spinach (for green colour).

4. Changing texture of foods, cutting them into different shapes and serving them with some homemade dips will definitely make kids like vegetables.

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Lunch ideas for kids who are picky eaters

1. Beetroot roti: On a regular day, you can pack beetroot roti for your kids with paneer bhurji, egg bhurji, rajma or bhindi.

2. Ragi cheela stuffed with paneer and spinach.

3. Corn rice or carrot rice with cucumber raita.

4. Oats idli stuffed with carrots and beetroot along with sambhar and coconut chutney.

5. On a cheat day, homemade burger with tikki made up of beetroot, chickpeas, quinoa, or sweet potato.

Apart from these lunch ideas, you can tweak food that is traditionally cooked at home with other colourful varieties to make food more interesting for kids. "Make sure that your child enjoys food," says Nmami in her post.

Also read: Brain Foods For Kids: Top 6 Foods You Must Add To Your Kid's Diet

Avoid force-feeding kids, eat only healthy food or food that you would want your child to eat in front of them, eat your meals with them and engage them in the cooking process to make your child more interested in home-cooked food.

Eat only healthy food in front of children and avoid force-feeding them
Photo Credit: iStock

(Nmami Agarwal is nutritionist at Nmami Life)

Disclaimer: This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.