Meal Planning Tips to Involve Your Kids

It can sometimes be challenging to create a meal plan for just yourself, but trying to meal plan for the whole family — including your kiddos — can be even more difficult. But involving your kids in meal planning can actually help them feel valued and reduce picky eating. And getting your kids to help with meal planning doesn’t mean getting them to help you with just the meal prep itself. Really, you should involve them from the planning stage when you’re picking out the week’s meals. Here are some tips to help you meal plan with your kids.

Create a Favorites List

One way to involve your kids in meal planning is by getting to know their favorite meals and dishes. You might be surprised to learn that they really love your tuna casserole or the green beans you served last week. You can create a list of their favorite meals, dishes, and snacks so that you have go-to foods. Refer to this list when you go grocery shopping or as you start to plan your meals with your kids. You could even gamify this list and create a spinner wheel with all their favorite (healthy) foods. This list can be a great idea generator for them of dishes they might want to eat during the week.

On EatLove, you can click on the heart icon on any meal tile or recipe to add it to your Favorites, making it easy to have a digital place to store your family’s favorite foods.

Ask Your Kids for Input

When you are planning out the meals for the upcoming week, ask your kids what they want to eat. This may seem very simple, but it can go a long way. Kids like feeling important, and by asking them what they think the family should eat, they get a chance to take on some responsibility and ownership. You can simply ask your kids, “What do you want to eat for dinner this week?” or ask other, more direct questions to help you gain insight from your children.

• Do you think we should eat XX or YY?
• Which one of these recipes sounds better to you?
• What fruit should we eat with dinner tomorrow?

Balance New Recipes with Familiar Ones

As you meal plan together, don’t just include foods from the Favorites list. It’s important that you encourage your kids to try new foods and new recipes to see what they like. This may be difficult if you have picky eaters; however, you can explore new recipes together and ask your kids what new meal sounds good to them. If you have buy-in from your kids on the week’s new recipes, then they are more likely to try them without pushing back. They might even be surprised to learn that they like tofu, mushrooms, or other new ingredients.

Batch Cook

This tip is more for the adults. Batch cooking is when you scale up the servings of a dish so that you can have more leftovers. You can reheat the leftovers for additional meals throughout the week, or you can freeze them for a quick meal later. This is one way to help you get the most out of your time in the kitchen while still ensuring that there are healthy food options in the home.

On EatLove, you can batch cook any meal by clicking on the ellipsis menu on a meal tile. Then, select Batch Cook. Then, you’ll be able to choose how many days’ worth of food you’d like to make.

Create Theme Days

Many kids respond well to meal themes, like Taco Tuesday or Meatless Monday. You could also designate one night a week to a specific cuisine, like Italian or Mexican. These themes can help get your kids’ creative juices flowing while also narrowing the scope of recipes to choose from. You can sit down as a family and discuss different themes that they might enjoy. And if you want to take it up a notch, you could even include some themed decorations or placemats for the occasion, making mealtime more enjoyable.

Involve Your Kids in Grocery Shopping

You can also take your kids to the grocery store with you if they are old enough to help you out. You could give one of your kids a copy of the grocery list and ask them to cross off the items as you put them in the cart. You can also ask your kids to “help” you find different items in the store, like onions or celery, so they get more familiar with different food items and where to find them. This is a great skill to have as they grow older so they won’t be intimidated by foods or layouts of the store.

Talk about Healthy Nutrition

As you meal plan with your children, you should share with them a little bit about healthy nutrition. You can tell them about why their bodies need protein, vegetables, fruit, etc., so they learn the building blocks of healthy eating. You can also talk to them about the specific nutrients that are in a meal they are eating. EatLove provides the complete nutritional breakdown of any recipe on our platform or that you upload yourself, so you can always be aware of what’s in a meal. By talking about the why behind what you’re eating, you can instill good habits and foster a healthy relationship with food.

Keep Planning Short

Kids don’t have a very long attention span, so it’s important that you do planning quickly. Try not to take more than 20 minutes at a time when conducting a family planning session because your kids might get bored and start looking at meal planning as a chore. Instead, you want it to feel like a fun and empowering experience for them. If you aren’t able to get all your planning done in a single session, then break it up throughout the week or only focus on a few meals at a time instead of the whole week.

EatLove is built to support families looking to achieve healthier eating habits together. We can provide meal ideas for the whole family and even have recipes that are kid approved and easy to prepare in large quantities. Sign up for a free trial to test it out.