Call it gazpacho, a Spanish summer cold vegetable soup, call it smoothie, call it raw soup… This is my favorite summer appetizer or drink. Full of colors, packed with vitamins and fibers, intense in taste. I make it with raw ingredients exclusively. I love it, my kids love it, especially sprinkled with fresh cut basil from my yard. That’s one of the ways I’ve been successfully using to get my kids to love vegetables almost as much as I do!

how to make kids love vegetables?

First, Give them all the colors !

Of course foods with colors are important. Not because it’s just more fun and happy to have colors, but because colors and textures have the code of what it provides to your body. Variety in textures and colors ensures that our body catches the widest net of nutrients our body needs on a daily basis!

Second, Don’t be afraid of giving your children foods with intense taste !

Use recipes that do have lots of colors and intense tastes. Not tastes full of additives or sugar. It does not even need to be familiar. The color in itself is motivating for a child. While your one-and-a-half year old may throw the veggie he does not know, he may try the first spoonful of delightfully colorful soup!

Third, Don’t be afraid of oils with intense taste!

Don’t use bland oils either ! The great thing about oil is that it feeds kids bellies. Fats are satisfying, filling calories. Don’t discount them ! But bland oils are usually unhealthy oils. They have been chemically stripped of their taste, and therefore their nutrients. Not only are they calories now devoid of nutrients, they are also toxic calories. And the oil source – soy beans, corn beans, sunflower seeds, safflower – are crops grown with high amounts of pesticides. If you remember that your body is made of your food, that your food informs your body at cellular level, then don’t become this type of food! And don’t let your kids become that food either.

Fourth, Use ingredients that have texture.

Crunchy is great ! But it does not need to be a cracker to be crunchy, it can be a raw carrot, a raw zucchini, broccoli piece, or a cucumber. if the cucumber gets a bit bitter, sprinkle with sea salt (i.e. the gray kind)!

Cooking a short time and gentle steam cooking also keeps foods crunchier. It also preserves nutrients and fibers best, keeps the glycemic index lower, and mostly, the taste ! Bonus: the more taste your food naturally preserves, the less you will need to rely on sauces. Not that sauces are bad, but they often contain less than ideal ingredients like toxic seed oils or processed sugar. A simple dressing made of extra virgin olive oil, salt and a little vinegar is often enough and very tasty!

Fifth, Try to offer variety !

You can have some of the same foods, and some new ones from time to time. The more often you change and offer new ingredients, new produce to your kids, the more open and curious they will be around natural foods. I know kids can be picky, but I do believe we often don’t give them enough credit and keep giving them what we are sure they like to make sure they eat enough.

Experience the foods with them and they will try them easier if they see you eat it. Siblings can also help a baby try foods he does not feel like eating if they show they like something.

Gentle steam cooking is your ally !

What is the healthiest: raw foods or gentle steamed foods?

Let’s say you can go to the farmer’s market and get some organic, local produce, meat and fish. This is arguably the most nutrient dense and least toxic type of produce you can find. Then I would say raw is healthiest, except of course in the case of animal products. In this case, gentle steam cooking is ideal: it detoxifies your meat and fish from toxins – unfortunately nothing is exactly toxin free in today’s environnement.

If your digestive system is used and has no problem digesting lightly, shortly or raw foods like raw carrots, broccoli, kale, green or red cabbage, raw foods that don’t contain too many anti nutrients ) i.e. some nutrients like phytates that hinder your body’s capacity to take up nutrients, raw is best. Beans and nuts are foods with anti nutrients that are best digested soaked, and in the case of legumes, sprouted or steamed. On the topic of legumes, check out my two posts Southwest Quinoa Salad With Steamed Beans and Savory Intense Hummus, With A Steamed Cuisine Twist.

Why are raw produce healthier than steamed produce?

Because any type of processing ( cutting is processing!) and cooking damages or kills nutrients and fibers to a degree. Therefore even gentle steam cooking does kill some nutrients, although to a much lesser degree to any other cooking method I know out there. Cooked apples, even steamed, contain much less nutrients than raw apples, cooked cabbage is less nutrient dense than raw cabbage. However, they are still nourishing you much better than any other cooking method would allow – in my modest opinion.

Unfortunately , not many scientific studies I am aware of have studied steamed produce nutrient density and body uptake and compared it to raw foods nutrient density and body uptake. I know of a study on the superior bioavailability – capacity of our bodies to take up nutrients – of some anticancer nutrients in steamed broccoli compared to other cooking methods.

Gentle steam cooking is the easiest, ideal cooking method as a family

I am a huge gentle steam cooking advocate to feed kids healthy foods and the reason is: this is the easiest, least time consuming method to keep natural ingredients texture and nutrient density as good as possible, but also tastes! No one likes mushy, tasteless food to which you need to add tons of store-bought sauce so that you can hopefully swallow your “healthy” foods. Kids don’t , and I can’t blame them, neither do I! Gentle steam cooking with French stainless steel Vitaliseur helps that. To learn more, check this article and many other recipe posts on this blog.

Healthy foods does not need tons of salt and sauce to be enjoyable. A few, quality ingredients, herbs, spices, have a taste of their own. They do require chewing and real tasting to be enjoyed. Of course it can take a bit more time than buying processed foods that are easy to eat without much chewing. But it is much more enjoyable than swallowing empty foods or compensating with supplement pills. And it makes us feel much better in the long run.

Get them to try a few bites!

If you follow these five principles, you may be able to get them interested without trying. However sometimes it also takes a bit of reliance on authority – age appropriately – and requiring that your children try a few bites. Why is that good? Because tastebuds exposure is key to getting used and starting to enjoy to a new taste. Secondly, our tastebuds change and kids should know that and give foods a chance they perhaps didn’t enjoy too much a first time. Trying them made a different way can help, but is not required. Personally, I also feel that kids to be used to trying a bit what they don’t like, if out of politeness: wherever our kids are invited, I love our host to be happy our kids try what is being served and when hosts’ efforts are rewarded.

Equipment needed

A powerful blender like the Vitamix

Whoever wants to make a smoothie with raw vegetables like carrots needs a powerful blender ! Even but cutting carrots in smaller bitesize pieces would not be enough for small blenders. If you don’t own something compatively powerful as a Vitamix as your main blender, you can also grate the carrots, that should work well. You now even have a non toxic stainless steel bowl option that adapts to all Vitamix blenders ! I own it and use it all the time, it works great

A good Extra Virgin olive oil

Chose extra virgin olive oil, ideally organic or 100% Italian. I personally use Costco’s Kirkland brand organic olive oil (in store! ) and transfer the oil to dark glass bottles to avoid contact with plastic as much as I can. Buying oils sold in glass bottles is ideal but it all depends on the consumption you make. My family uses A LOT of extra virgin olive oil, so I buy in big 2 liters bottles.

Grey sea salt

We have been told many times not to have too much salt on account of sodium contents. True! Too much sodium is bad, but the minerals in salt are good and necessary ! The solution: have an intake of real sea salt, for example REAL SALT or Atlantic sea salt, unbleached an non iodized. You do need iodine in your food, so I don’t necessarily advocate for 100% sea salt and 0% iodized salt depending on everyone’s diet, but an intake of grey salt brings in less sodium and more minerals into your food. Redmond and San Francisco Salt Company both have sea salt I use and that provide bulk purchase options.

Ready to serve the family a healthy treat?

Other recipes you may like

As appetizers, my kids do love Parsley Apple Olive oil Veggie dip or Zucchini Boats With Parsley Eggs Sauce. these recipes are made of raw and gently steamed ingredients and are full of taste! Of course Savory Intense Hummus, With A Steamed Cuisine Twist is a must try, and is incredibly easy to make and digest!

Main courses include many salads like Greek Quinoa Entree Salad – A classic with a twist !, Southwest Quinoa Salad With Steamed Beans or in the fall pointing its nose Shaved Brussels Sprouts apple and Ham Salad.

We also love asian flair meals like Fried Rice, Steamed Cuisine Style, Summer Salad : Shrimp, Crunch and Noodles, Pineapple Chicken over Basmati Rice.

Gentle steam cooking can also surprise you in the desert department ! Try these Chocolate Hazelnuts Einkorn Steamed Bites ! Einkorn Banana bread taste great too, and I have a few bread recipes that taste wonderful too ( stay tuned! )