How many times does the speaker say a food should be presented before a child may take a bite?

Mona SharmaCelebrity nutritionist and wellness advocate

How to Get Your Kids to Eat Holistically

2 May 2020 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:39

In this short YouTube segment, Mona Sharma shares a series of actionable strategies for parents who want to encourage their children to eat more vegetables. She emphasizes the importance of being a role model by having vegetables at home daily, and suggests hands‑on experiences such as planting broccoli seeds so kids can watch the food grow and develop a personal connection to it. She recommends taking children to grocery stores or farmer’s markets and turning the produce aisle into a creative game (e.g., matching colors to a rainbow) to give kids a sense of ownership over their food choices. Sharma also stresses persistence, noting that children typically need to be exposed to a new vegetable 10‑15 times before they’ll try it, and advises parents not to discard leftovers but to repurpose them in smoothies or soups. A second speaker adds a fourth tip: blending all vegetables and fruits into a smoothie or soup to make the taste more appealing. The overall message is that a holistic, patient, and playful approach—combining modeling, involvement, repetition, and creative preparation—can gradually shift kids’ attitudes toward vegetables.

Questions this video answers

About 10 to 15 times.

Chapters

How do we bring kids into this mini ashram experience? And how do we convince them to give this a shot? Yeah, so especially vegetables with kids, right? This is a pretty stressful topic for parents. Like, I've got a five year old and a one year old, and I would say that first and foremost, you want to be the role model. Have veggies at your house every single day. You have to lead by example. Tip number one is, you know, show them how vegetables are grown. When I showed my son how to plant broccoli seeds, he was so excited to watch it grow. And then finally he could eat it. And even today, broccoli is his favorite food. If that's not an option, pull up a video. You can see it's a really cool process. When you see time lapse videos, get a little planter at your house, plant some seeds. It's a really cool thing for them to see. Tip number two, take them grocery shopping with you or to the farmer's market. And I know the parents are like, God, no, I can't do that. But once in a while, take them with you. And when you're in the produce section, use your imagination. Have some fun. So I'll say to my kids, what are the colors that we need to make pictures of the rainbow? What colors do we need to draw out? The sun or some trees? And the cool thing about that is that when you give them control, they get a sense of satisfaction. Right. They want to take ownership of what they're eating. And then tip number three, I would say, don't give up. Parents get so frustrated. We put those veggies out every night. We feel like we've got to throw them out. It's a process, but we now know that it actually takes about 10 to 15 times of putting that food in front of them before they even take a bite. So don't give up. Lead by example. If there's leftovers, instead of throwing them out, throw them into your superfood smoothie.
Now I'm gonna add tip number four, which is you put all your vegetables and fruits and you blend them together as a smoothie. Or in this case, you make a soup. Yeah, what happened? This tastes good.
You got it.
As a kid, if you hand this to me, I'm eating it because it tastes good. I don't need to know that it's loaded with nutrients. It just tastes good. Take it from me, a big kid, you can get your kids to like vegetables. You just have to be creative. Mona, thanks so much for sharing. We're going to have these recipes on our website, thedoctorstv.com.