Fruit and Vegetable Smoothies

Like many toddlers, Evan isn’t very fond of vegetables. He used to love them and eat them willingly. He slowly started to refuse many of them and now it is extremely difficult to get him to eat them at all. I still offer them as much as possible. I also “hide” them in meals.

Fruit and Veg Smoothie

However, I still didn’t feel like he was getting enough. That’s when I came up with the idea to make smoothies with veggies in them. Evan LOVES pretty much all fruit. So smoothies are a great option for sneaking vegetables into his diet. I looked around at various smoothie recipes and came up with a base recipe that I thought would work. Over the course of a few weeks, I tweaked things some more and this is the final recipe I use.

Fruit and Vegetable Smoothie Recipe:

1/2 cup of plain, vanilla, or banilla yogurt. (We use Stonyfield Organic)

1 cup of fruit/vegetables – I started with about 1/4 cup vegetables and 3/4 cup fruit and slowly worked up to 1/2 cup vegetables and 1/2 cup fruit

1/4 cup – 1/2 cup milk (depending on which fruit/veg I use and how thick the smoothie gets)

1 Banana (optional) – This is great for covering up vegetables with a stronger taste or if your child can still taste the vegetables and you want to up the amount.

I mostly use frozen fruit and vegetables. I find this easier because they don’t go bad so quickly and I can keep many different varieties in the freezer at once. Most of the smoothies we make have strawberries, blueberries and a vegetable or two. Often the vegetable will be pea/carrot mix or baby spinach and sometimes I use both. The frozen spinach was too strong for Evan, so we do get that fresh. I recommend experimenting with different combinations of fruit depending on what your child likes and then adding in veggies slowly.

Hope this helps if you are struggling to get your picky eater to consume more vegetables! If it does work for you, I’d love for you to leave a comment and let me know. Also, tips are greatly appreciated. How do you get your children to eat more vegetables?

Looking for more food recipes?

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Fruit and Veggie Muffins