Tired of your children making excuses for not finishing their food? Running out of ways to get them to eat everything off the plate? Here are 5 ways in which you can get them to stop wasting food:
- Save The Leftovers For The Next Meal: Children don’t usually relish having the same food for the next meal. Make a rule that leftovers will be carried forward to the next meal. This will motivate children to finish their food. Also, you can get creative with leftovers. For eg: if you have some pasta left from lunch, you can make pasta salad for the night.
- Teach Them To Serve Smaller Portions for Food: Children get excited at the sight of food and serve themselves large portions which they later struggle to finish. Make them understand that they can go back for second or third helpings, they also need to be told that there’ll be more if they wanted and that they don’t need to worry about it not being enough.
- Make Food Interesting for Them: You can give vegetables or dishes funny names, tell them stories around food, or even sing songs about food. Children then attach fun to food rather than just looking at it as a part of daily routine.
- Get Them to Help You Cook: Make them your fun little helpers in the kitchen. Simple chores like mixing or blending or washing vegetables will certainly peak their curiosity about food and ingredients. You can also have a pop quiz like – identify this vegetable or this spice. The more they learn about what goes into making food, the more they appreciate and respect it.
- Tell Them The Dark Realities of Food Wastage: Drive them around the city and show them the pile of garbage. Tell them how lucky they are to have good food cooked for them, and emphasize on the grim fact that not every kid is privileged enough. Don’t safeguard your child from these truths; they’ll learn to respect and value their life better.