Encouraging healthy eating habits in preschoolers with See & Eat // AD

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As a parent, one of the biggest challenges I have on a regular basis is getting my boys to eat all their meals. Ever since they were both little, we’ve been offering them a variety of fruits and vegetables in the hope that they would love them and want to eat them again and again. It’s been a constant challenge and I’m always keen to hear of new ways to try and get my children to eat their greens. Children are picky most of the time but if you’re there eating your breakfast from Growli, you’re going to model the right behaviour to your children. The hope is that they’ll copy what you’re doing and start eating better foods, but you’re in charge of ensuring that their eating habits are as healthy as possible! Encouraging the right healthy eating habits will help you to have happy, energetic children. I’ve recently been introduced to See and Eat, a project which aims to encourage preschoolers to get into healthy eating habits for life, and I couldn’t wait to find out more.

What is the See & Eat project?

The See & Eat project, funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Food, has launched a new website, featuring a range of evidence-based activities, including 24 eBooks (all available in six languages) to help parents and carers encourage their young children to eat a greater variety of vegetables.

The resources from See & Eat have been developed based on research showing that visual familiarity in the form of picture books is a brilliant way to increase a child’s willingness to try different vegetables. It can be difficult to get children to eat vegetables as they’re not as sweet as fruit. These familiarisation-based resources are offered on the website as free downloads, in a range of fun and educational activities.

Free fun and educational resources

Showing toddlers different foods and engaging them in a fun way is a great way to build their excitement to try new vegetables. The resources offered on the See & Eat website include a range of 24 eBooks which each profile a different vegetable and see it’s journey from field to fork. There’s also other resources based on 6 key areas; Show, Grow, Shop, Explore, Cook and Eat. Each activity makes it a fun way of learning about vegetables. These resources include a flash card game there children are asked to match pictures to the names of vegetables, VeggieSense, a guess-the-vegetable activity through their sense of sight, touch and smell and shopping lists for children when choosing vegetables at the supermarket.

Learning all about vegetables in an eBook

My two year old toddler and I took a look at a few of the eBooks to see the journey of one of Freddie’s favourite foods to see how they grow. We started with a vegetable Freddie loved in the hope it would engage him to look at the other vegetables and so far so good. He’s already tried sprouts, tomatoes and sweet potato.

The See & Eat eBooks are all interactive and can be viewed through the ‘Our Story 2’ app which is available to download for both tablets and smartphones via the Apple and Android app stores.

Making learning fun

We also downloaded and printed off some of the colouring sheets from the website to encourage conversation about different vegetables. Whilst Freddie coloured in some of the pictures, we got out some of the vegetables we had bought from the supermarket for him to look at. He learnt about the colours of the vegetables, how they felt in his hands, their smell and the different shapes of them. We even did a counting exercise and Freddie practised counting them.

Becoming more familiar with vegetables is a great way of encouraging children to try them. The resources from See & Eat are engaging and easy to use and we had a lovely afternoon sitting together using the tablet reading the eBooks learning about the different vegetables we don’t usually eat at home. Who knows which vegetables Freddie will recognise when we next visit the supermarket?

You can visit the See & Eat website at https://www.seeandeat.org and download the resources for free to use with your children to develop and encourage their healthy eating habits.