While you might have the best of intentions to get your kids to eat healthy food, kids tend to only want to eat what tastes best to them. And usually, this includes food that is sweet or salty, which isn’t always the healthiest option.
Sadly, many parents struggle with feeding their kids healthy food and getting their kids not to waste food from meals that they refuse to eat. If this is something you’ve been dealing with, here are three things you can do with your kids’ uneaten food.
Save For Smoothies
When you go through the trouble to wash and prepare for your kids to eat, it can be very disappointing when they don’t want to eat it. So rather than throwing the food out, SuperHealthyKids.com recommends that you save the product to get thrown into a smoothie at a later date.
If you’re able to get the fruits or vegetables frozen quickly after the meal, they should work great for making a healthy smoothie. And since certain veggies can easily be put into a smoothie with fruit to mask the taste, you might have better luck getting your kids to eat healthy foods this way.
Repurpose Into New Meals
If the food that your child didn’t end up eating is still usable, the next best thing to having them eat that food now is to repurpose it for a meal that they can try again later.
According to Amy Palanjian, a contributor to YummyToddlerFood.com, there are a lot of different ways that you can repurpose foods into other meals. For example, many vegetables can easily be put into muffins. Also, you can create freezer pops out of fruits and dairy so that your kids will still eat that food and get the nutrition from it.
Compost It
Sometimes, the food that your child was given to eat during the meal isn’t going to be salvageable for them to eat in the future. When this happens, there are still other alternatives to simply throwing the food out.
If you have pets, you may be able to feed some of the food to them so that it’s still put to use in feeding someone in your household. Another option you could try is to compost that food along with other compostable products from your house. This way, you can still have some good come out of this uneaten food by serving as a fertilizer or other benefit to the soil around your home or a garden that you may be working on.
If you’ve been having a hard time figuring out what to do with the food that gets left uneaten on your kids’ plates after meals each day, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you find some options that you can live with other than tossing it.