I’ve had great luck laying out a “rainbow” of appetizer fruits and veggies—-grape tomatoes, baby carrots, yellow peppers, cucumbers, blueberries, purple grapes (sub in whatever produce matches the color). They don’t all get consumed at the same rate, but my kids love the idea of eating a rainbow and it soothes my aesthetic sensibilities…

Nibble Night: (ages 4 and up): All leftovers put on the counter. Any combo at all. Add yogurt or hummus or egg if lacking protein. Or group them and at least one selection from each group.

Breakfast dinner: Obvious

I make what I want to eat. I always make sure there is one element that I know my kids like. And then they eat what they want, and I don’t stress if they don’t eat anything. The only rule is they have to sit at the table for five minutes. If they are super hungry they can have a banana and milk before bed, but they use this option maybe once a month. This way the adults have a pleasant meal and there aren’t any battles about what or how much they eat.

Meal prep freezer meals in advance. That way you can always take something out of the freezer on days with hectic schedules. Soups, stews, instant pot recipes, etc. are great for this.

I have loosely been using the meal guide, Real Easy Weekdays, by Kids Eat In Color since 2020. It’s so helpful, especially on those days when I forget to think about dinner, and offers a ton of variety on how to still incorporate veggies, fruits and proteins without being overwhelmed.

– Similar to others, kids eat carrots or cucumber “veggie-tizer” while they watch TV and I cook. (Thanks for the idea, Emily!)
– I meal plan on Wednesdays and grocery shop Fridays, plus a delivery on Sundays. I usually cook Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, and we eat leftovers the rest of the week.
– I cook what my husband and I are excited to eat. Then we feed a version of it to our kids. For example, if we are having a pasta with sauce and veggies on it, we keep some pasta plain, and have some plain veggies ready too. I also rely a lot on frozen veg (like green beans and corn) to offer plain versions. With three kids, ages 2-7, this makes it easier to accommodate everyone’s preferences.

I agree on having an always-available safe option that is filling but not too interesting. For us, it’s plain Greek yogurt if they don’t want dinner, plus an optional banana before bed. Never any other options so there’s no negotiating! It’s probably put to use only once a month.

I aim to include a “safe” vegetable and a “sacrificial” (stretch) vegetable. The sacrificial vegetable is there to make the other meal components look better by comparison, and allow my (British) kids some authority to reject it, in a low stakes way that doesn’t bother me. “Ugh I don’t like this kale! But I’ll eat these carrots over here…” Usually the sacrificial vegetable ends up in my lunch pot – which was the plan all along!

I cook dinner in the afternoon. (I work from home, and frequently use my lunch break to cook dinner, or at least get something in an oven or crockpot.) When we all get home, there’s no waiting and we can eat right away.

Plan the meals out before the week starts. Not having to make a dinner decision after work is incredibly helpful in keeping us eating healthy.

When both adults are working from home, we do the ‘big’ meal at lunch so we have all day to clean up! Then dinner is leftovers/easy lunch food.

Intuitive eating: we don’t police our toddler’s eating at all! I make what I want to make for dinner, and if he doesn’t like it, he always has the option to have a PB&J instead. A lot of times he eats the PB&J and then what was on his plate, which we honestly have yet to figure out his logic on. After about 2 years of boycotting corn completely, he recently declared it his favorite vegetable (!!) and now will eat an entire ear.

I’ve never been good at sitting down and meal planning, but my life recently changed when I started asking ChatGPT to do it for me. I now use a shortcut on my phone to input the number of days I need meals for, which meals I need (usually just dinner), and give it a few prompts (e.g. sheet-pan, quick, kid-friendly) and it gives me the recipes for each day and a shopping list. I can do it quickly in the grocery store parking lot if I find myself needing to go to the store for something random we need but not having had the time to think ahead about other meals for the week. Highly recommend giving it a go. This was my first foray into using ChatGPT. I also never comment on things here but this feels like such a helpful life hack that I thought it would be worth sharing. There is a link to a shortcut to add to the shortcuts app on your phone (iPhone) if you want it to automatically create a grocery list and meal plan saved in your Notes app.

We order from a weekly meal delivery service. The food is freshly cooked in an industrial kitchen and delivered to our house every Saturday. This gets us through most lunches and dinners for at least the first half of the week.

I’ve started making a list got both my kids in OneNote of the things they like eating. When we are at the table they can tell me “please add this to my list!” Two purposes for the list: 1) help me with meal planning suggestions and 2) keep the association with food positive. “I love this food” instead of “I hate that food”

I’ve also used Trello to create a meal prep board where I can drag cards and recipes from one of three categories: “ideas for another day” “to cook or prep” and “complete”. I add tags based on if the kids liked an element, loved it, or I need to tweak the recipe. I can also add recipes in text or links for easy reference. The “to cook or prep” also helps me build a grocery list and plan my meal prep activities.