Kids Won’t Eat Veggies? These Fruits Give Them the Same Vitamins and Minerals

While we would be thrilled if our kids ate all of their veggies, introducing more fruit is a great way to fill in some of the nutritional gaps. Fruits are loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber and they're usually a favorite of kids. While you should continue offering veggies every day, there are plenty of fruits that you’ll want to add to your next grocery list.

Also, it’s important that you are offering whole fruits to get all that healthy goodness. So, that means skipping fruit juice and instead offering the fruits whole or in pieces, in a smoothie, or mixed into something like yogurt.

Not sure which fruits you should offer up if your kiddo is passing on their veggies? Here’s a great chart created by Jennifer Anderson, who is a registered dietitian, mom, and the writer behind Kids Eat in Color. From vitamin C in strawberries, grapes packed with antioxidants, and kiwi loaded with vitamin K, serving up their favorite fruit and adding in a few new ones can help ease your mind about what your kids are eating. Hopefully, it can end the mealtime battles as well.

There are still plenty of vitamins and nutrients you’ll find in other fruits.

• When it comes to fiber, dried apricots are a great source and so are pears, bananas, raisins, and kiwis.

• While strawberries, kiwis, grapes, and blueberries don’t have as much iron as spinach or asparagus, creating a fruit salad will help your kiddos get some of the iron they need each day.

• Papayas, blackberries, cantaloupes, oranges, and strawberries are great sources of folate.

• For vitamin A, try watermelon, oranges, grapefruits, and mangoes. Cherries, bananas, and kiwis are great sources of potassium.

If you are looking for a great way to talk to your kids about why it’s important to eat fruits and veggies, Anderson created these kid friendly talking points, like “orange foods help you see in the dark.”

Having a picky eater can be rough on everyone at meal time. Here are a few of our favorite hacks to encourage your kids to try a few new foods.