by Jessica Penner, RD and Nita Sharda, RD (Happy Healthy Eaters)
If you’ve ever felt frustrated that your toddler just won’t eat vegetables—you’re not alone. So many parents share the same struggle: their little ones often happily munch on fruit, but turn up their noses at anything green. It can feel discouraging, especially when you’re doing your best to raise a healthy eater.
And the bigger picture? The numbers show it’s not just toddlers. Nearly 90% of Canadians aren’t meeting the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables. While national data specific to young children is limited, we can make a pretty safe assumption that they’re also missing the mark—especially when veggies are often the tough sell.
But listen, we’re moms first and dietitians second. With four children who’ve moved through the toddler years of food rejection, we’re here to tell you, you can help your child learn to like veggies.
Before we get into all of our juicy tips, we want to touch on something important…
When pressure is on the dining table
It’s completely normal to worry about your toddler’s eating. Are they eating enough? Too much? Why are they suddenly refusing vegetables they used to love?
When worry takes over, it’s easy for pressure to sneak in—sometimes without us even realizing it. But here’s the hard truth: pressure usually backfires. It might “work” in the short term, but over time, it can lead to mealtime battles, distrust, and a child who’s less in tune with their own hunger and fullness cues.
Some common examples of pressure include:
- “Just take three more bites and then you can have dessert.”
- “You liked this yesterday, why won’t you eat it today?”
- “Come on, eat it for mommy.”
- Hiding veggies in food without telling them.
While it’s natural to want your child to eat, it’s not our job to “get” them to eat. Our job is to offer a variety of foods in a supportive environment—and let them decide if and how much to eat.
With that said, here are s a few ways you can support your child to enjoy vegetables.
3 Ways to Help Your Toddler Fall In Love with Veggies
1. Serve it with a dip
Vegetables are naturally bitter, and for young children with a higher number taste buds, that bitterness can be even more intense. On top of that, babies and toddlers are biologically wired to prefer sweet flavours. Their first tastes—amniotic fluid in the womb and colostrum from the breast—are both sweet, especially compared to something like broccoli!
Understanding this can help us empathize with our strong-willed toddlers. One way to support them is by offering veggies with a dip or sauce. Kids love to dip, and there’s no shortage of tasty options: ranch, ketchup, maple syrup, hummus, tzatziki, or labneh can all make veggies more appealing—and the whole experience more fun.
Here are a some fun dip ideas you can explore, or better yet, let your kid pick:
2. Add Veggies Into “Winner Meals”
Let’s be real—vegetables on their own aren’t always the easiest sell for toddlers. But when you add veggies into meals your child already enjoys (aka “winner meals”), they become more approachable and often better accepted.
Think:
🥕 Carrots in muffins
🌱 Spinach in smoothies
🍝 A veggie-loaded pasta sauce that tastes like comfort food
We especially love this Veggie-Loaded Pasta Sauce, which packs seven different vegetables into a rich, flavourful sauce. Every bowl delivers three full servings of vegetables—and still gets the toddler stamp of approval! Pasta to the rescue!
Wait… Are We Hiding the Veggies?
Not quite. You’ll notice we’re not calling this a “hidden veggie” sauce.
We’re all about making vegetables visible and approachable, not sneaking them in behind our kids’ backs. If your child finds out you’ve been slipping zucchini or celery into their meals without telling them, it can feel like a breach of trust. That moment of “you tricked me” can lead to skepticism at future meals—and we want to avoid that.
Instead, talk about the veggies in the dish. Let them help you wash the red peppers or toss the chopped carrots into the pan. The goal is for our kids to enjoy veggies because they taste good—not because they were tricked into eating them.
3. Keep Offering—Even When It Feels Hopeless
If you’re a parent, you get a lot of advice about how to feed your child, but there’s one thing that research continues to support: repeat exposure works.
Toddlers need to see, touch, and smell food many times before they feel ready to taste and eat it. While the exact number of exposures varies from child to child (and veggie to veggie), studies suggest that 4 – 10+ exposures can lead not only to accepting that one vegetable—but to being more open to others, too.
Another thing to keep in mind? That “yuck” face doesn’t necessarily mean your toddler dislikes the food. Toddlers are still figuring out what’s familiar, what’s safe, and how things feel in their mouth. A grimace could simply mean, “This is new,” not “This is yuck.”
We often say: kids can’t learn to like foods they’re never offered. So even if your toddler refuses broccoli again, don’t give up just yet. Try serving it in different ways—roasted, with dip, mixed into pasta—and keep the mood low-pressure. Over time, those repeated, positive exposures can build trust and curiosity.
Conclusion
Veggies and toddlers don’t always mix easily—but that doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. Now you know, it’s normal for young kids to be hesitant about vegetables.
Besides, remember we said nearly 90% of Canadians aren’t meeting the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables? There’s a good chance you can make tiny tweaks to your own intake and this is the power of modeling! There you have it, a bonus tip!
By staying consistent, keeping the pressure low, getting creative with familiar meals, and offering veggies in a variety of ways (again and again!), you’re doing exactly what your child needs. It’s not about perfection—it’s about trust, exposure, and a positive long-term relationship with food.
About the authors:
Jessica Penner and Nita Sharda are registered dietitians with a strong passion for childhood nutrition. You can connect with them for nutrition support and more recipes at www.happyhealthyeaters.com
