Berries are always a favorite with kids because of their sweet flavor, brilliant colors and bite-size shapes. It’s easy to use kid-friendly serving ideas featuring fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Here are some fun, tasty ways to help your family eat healthier.
Let them play with their food
Incorporate games and interaction into meals and your kids won’t even realize they’re learning life-long healthy eating habits. Allow your kids to touch, feel and taste as much as possible on their own. Antioxidant-packed, colorful fruits and vegetables can become a regular part of your family’s diet by introducing kids to finger food fun and games. When it comes to fun, berries are a natural! For instance, raspberries are a perfect fit on little fingertips. Blueberries and blackberries can fill waffle holes for an impromptu game of tic-tac-toe. And strawberries have built-in “handles” for eating on their own or for dipping into yogurt, applesauce or melted chocolate chips.
Activity Idea
Create your own “Rainbow Bingo” game. Your kids can help make the game cards. Each square contains a photo or drawing of a different colored fruit or vegetable. Each time your kids eat one of the items on the card, they cross it off. They can even win a small prize at the end of the day. It’s a fun, easy way to introduce a greater variety of colorful, nutritious foods, such as fresh berries, into your family’s diet—so everybody wins.
Get kids involved
One of the best ways to get kids excited about eating healthier and enjoying a wider variety of foods is to get them involved in the process. This includes everything from letting your kids create their own berry recipes, to letting them help with chopping, stirring and taste-testing new foods, or even planting a vegetable garden or an herb window sill box.
Activity Idea
Create a family cookbook. Give kids index cards and a scrapbook they can decorate, so that they can record their favorite family recipes (or new ideas of their own) and come up with fun recipe names. Older kids can also take digital photos of their creations and create the entire cookbook on their computer (a custom cookbook makes a perfect keepsake or a great gift for grandparents). Get your kids started with something simple, such as a sweet, scrumptious “Berry Breakfast Sundae.” Simply have them layer raspberries and blueberries as high as they can onto yogurt, then sprinkle with their favorite breakfast cereal and top with a strawberry.
Plan and shop together
Before you head to the supermarket sit down with your family and plan out a few meals and snacks for the week. Let each child be responsible for shopping and preparing a meal (age permitting). While at the store, show your kids how to read nutrition labels and let them select their own fruits and vegetables. If your community has a Farmers Market, let the kids wander around and choose something to take home.
Activity Idea
Create a re-usable shopping list “template.” Every family has a core list of foods they shop for on a regular basis. Let your kids help write the list of core items, and decorate the list with hand-drawn pictures or photos clipped from magazines. Make color copies of the list with blank space to write in your other weekly grocery items. Since fresh berries are available year-round, be sure to add them to your pre-printed list.
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Explore the world
Introduce your kids to new foods and new flavors by looking around the globe for inspiration. Ethnic cuisine is popular, and many dishes from other countries, such as Mexican quesadillas, Chinese pot stickers and Italian lasagna, are already assimilated into our culture. The greater the variety of foods your kids are exposed to when they are young, during family meals, the less likely they are to be picky eaters. Explore the flavors and spices of cuisines from places like India, Morocco and Thailand by looking through cookbooks with your family, watching The Food Network or trying a new restaurant each month.
Activity Idea
Create theme dinners. Let your kids take turns choosing a new dish to try from a different country. You can even put a world map on the wall and use pins or stickers to mark the countries or regions. Pick a night when the whole family is together to have your theme dinner. For “Mexico Night,” decorate with the bright colors of sunny Mexico and serve Strawberry Margaritas (“Virgin” Margaritas for the kids, of course). For dessert, let the kids make easy Berry Nachos. Simply cut flour tortillas into triangles, sprinkle with sugar and bake, then top with sliced strawberries and scoops of vanilla and strawberry ice cream. Scoop up the berries and ice cream with the sweet, crispy tortilla chips.