Parents Reveal Clever Hacks For Duping Kids Into Eating Healthy Foods

Ally Perry • Writer and Editor

Feb 26, 2023 3:30 PM EST

One of the most common and frustrating parenting fails is getting kids to eat something other than chicken tendies and ice cream once in a while. When dinnertime is a nutritional battlefield seven days a week, it's no fun for anyone; being forced to eat something that seems like the grossest thing in the world is bad enough, but being the person trying to convince a child that vegetables really aren't that terrible can be even worse.

A family argument that we've all had to deal with at some point or another, it's no wonder that many have tried to come up with creative solutions to it. However, it's not every day this comes in the form of a behavior management tactic, as happened recently with Emily Adrian and her four year old son. After seeing him "provoking" her by repeatedly putting a dirty leaf in his mouth, she decided to address his mischief in an unconventional and dietarily beneficial way. Repackaging plain old salad as "special eating leaves", she successfully got her son eating an entire plate of greenery.

Sharing her unlikely triumph to Twitter, she prompted numerous parents, guardians and babysitters to recount their own methods for encouraging kids to eat the kinds of foods usually slipped to the dog or 'accidentally' spilt on the floor. From interesting reimaginings of certain items to making their meals into a game, the responses were thought provoking and amusing in equal measure. If there's one thing we can take away from all these strategies, it's that children are super weird, and getting them to do anything sensible means using that to your advantage.