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Mom shares viral hack to get children to eat vegetables: ‘I don’t even like peppers and now I want one’

‘This made me realise that my mom has been doing this for years,’ one viewer writes

Meredith Clark
New York
Monday 24 January 2022 22:05 GMT
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Mom shares hack to get kids to eat vegetables
Mom shares hack to get kids to eat vegetables (TikTok / @adamyfam )

One of the hardest parts about being a parent is making sure your child has a healthy intake of fruits and vegetables, as many children would rather eat bags of candy and sweets rather than chow down on a salad.

However, according to one mother, who has since gone viral on TikTok after sharing her fool-proof way of encouraging her children to eat vegetables, it doesn’t always have to be a battle.

TikTok user Adamyfam posted the hack to their account on 8 January with the caption: “How we get our kids to eat their vegetables… right after they finished saying they weren’t hungry!”

The mother began the video chopping up some yellow peppers as she explained: “To get kids to eat their vegetables, I just go up to a child and start nibbling while I’m like: ‘What’s going on?’ and I just hold them like this, no pressure, and we’ll see if they take it.”

She then filmed herself walking up to her young son who was on his laptop. She proceeds to ask him questions while pointing to the screen with a pepper in hand. Then, as she nonchalantly chats with her son, she hands him one of the peppers to snack on.

Next, the mom walks into another room, where two girls are playing a computer game. As she talks to them, one daughter even reaches for a pepper asking to have one.

Parents were amazed by the useful hack, which has been viewed more than 2.8m times, and took to the comments to share their praise.

TikTok user SwedishSwan joked: “It’s a scientific fact that food taste better out of your mom’s hands or off her plate, while another commenter, RoxyPocket, wrote: “I’ve never wanted a pepper more in my life.”

The trick even gained attention from health experts and professional dietitians, with one user writing: “As a dietitian I kind of love this - positive food modelling.”

According to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics, about 75 per cent of children and adolescents in the US eat fruit on a given day, and 90 per cent consume vegetables. However, the per centage of children eating fruits and vegetables decreases as they grow older.

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