How to Get Your Kid to Eat More Veggies: Should You Blend or “Hide” Vegetables?
A Dietitian explains the data
If your child refuses anything green, only eats beige foods, or pushes vegetables around the plate, you’re not alone. 95% of Australian kids don’t meet daily vegetable recommendations, and one of the most common questions parents ask is:
“How do I get my kid to eat more veggies?” Followed closely by: “Is blending or hiding vegetables bad?”
There’s a lot of guilt and confusion, so let’s clear it up using the latest evidence — including the 2024 Cochrane Collaboration review, the most comprehensive review of all of the relevant research available to date on improving vegetable intake in children under five.
Why Kids Resist Vegetables (It’s Not Your Fault)
Between ages 2 to 6, children naturally go through food neophobia, a developmental stage where they’re cautious of new foods — especially slightly bitter ones, like vegetables. This stage is perfectly normal and has both evolutionary and environmental influences.
Kids don’t need “better” parents to eat vegetables. They need time, repeated exposure, and positive experiences.
What the Latest Science Says About How to Get Kids to Eat More Veggies
1. Repeated exposure is the most proven strategy — but results are small.
The 2024 Cochrane review looked at 53 independent high-quality studies (with a total of 12,350 children) evaluating different methods to get kids to eat more veggies and found that the act of repeatedly offering vegetables, without pressure or reward, increases intake of veggies, but only by around 15.5 g per day (which is about a tablespoon of cooked peas).
This was found to be the most consistently effective way to help kids accept vegetables long-term.
Bottom line: Keep offering veggies separately — it works, but expect gradual change, not huge nutrition gains. That means sometimes veggies will get left on the plate after eating using this method and that's OK.
2. Incorporating vegetables into familiar foods helps kids eat MORE vegetables.
This isn’t trickery — it’s normal cooking. Think: pasta sauce with carrot, smoothies with spinach, mac and cheese with pumpkin.
Individual clinical trials strongly support this approach:
Spill et al., 2011: Kids ate 52–73 g more vegetables per day when puréed vegetables were added to meals.
Correia et al., 2014: Pairing broccoli with a liked food increased willingness to taste from 79% → 95%.
Kids feel safer trying new flavours when they appear in a familiar, accepted format.
Bottom line: When combining this strategy with repeated exposure, you get a powerful one-two punch: more vegetable intake now + better acceptance over time of separate vegetables.
3. There is no clinical evidence that blending or chopping vegetables into foods is harmful
Across the research to date, there are no high-quality studies showing that adding blended or finely chopped vegetables into meals causes harm.
Although online articles with titles like “Why Hiding Veggies in Your Kid’s Food is a Mistake” or “Should I Hide Vegetables In My Kid’s Meals?” — list many supposed downsides, these claims are not supported by clinical trial evidence.
Existing studies do not show that blended-veg strategies:
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- Increase fussiness
- Reduce liking of whole vegetables
- Create long-term feeding problems
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Importantly, blending alone isn’t shown to improve liking of whole vegetables — that effect comes from repeat exposure (see point 1) — however it also hasn’t been shown to make things worse.
The main caution feeding professionals raise is around deception — telling kids “there are no veggies in this!” or creating “gotcha” moments. While this hasn’t been formally studied, research on trust and feeding relationships suggests deception can undermine confidence.
Transparent incorporation, however, is considered completely fine — and often helpful. If kids ask, tell them what’s in the meal; if they don’t, you don’t need to announce every ingredient unless this is something you routinely do for all your meals. The goal is simply to normalise vegetables as part of everyday food.
Bottom line: When there’s no deception involved, incorporating vegetables is a powerful, evidence-aligned approach. In fact, in many cultures it’s not viewed as a ‘strategy’ at all — it’s simply normal cooking. Asian cuisines, for example, commonly blend and layer vegetables into dishes like curries, soups, and stir-fries as an everyday part of eating.
The Balanced, Evidence-Based Approach
✔ Keep offering vegetables as they are. It’s the most reliable strategy for building long-term acceptance, but it typically increases intake by only ~15.5 g/day — which is why many parents, understandably, look for additional ways to meet nutritional needs.
✔ Avoid pressure and deception. Even if it’s frustrating, when they only take a tiny bite of carrot, focus on creating calm, positive eating experiences. Stay relaxed and honest: “Yes, there are veggies in this — and it’s yummy.”
✔ Make vegetables feel normal, not a battle. Pressure, bribes, and negotiations draw more attention to the food and often imply vegetables aren’t to be enjoyed or something to be earned.
✔ Normalise pairing and incorporating vegetables. Mix veggies into everyday meals — soups, sauces, smoothies, muffins — and serve them alongside the same food in a different form and alongside foods your child already enjoys. Some studies show these strategies can achieve increases 3–4x higher than repeated exposure alone. Kids learn to enjoy vegetables when they feel safe, trusted, and unpressured.
The Bottom Line
There is no evidence that blending or adding vegetables into familiar foods harms children’s eating habits. In fact, it often helps — increasing intake, boosting confidence, and supporting the long-term goal: kids who feel comfortable eating diverse vegetables in all their forms.
Positive exposure + practical veggie-enriched foods isn’t “cheating.” It’s smart, child-friendly, and backed by evidence.
We know that not every family has time to cook veggified meals from breakfast to dessert — and that’s why we created Veghead. Our veggie-packed mini muffins are just the beginning. We’re on a mission to make it easier (and guilt-free) for families to get more veggies in, every day.
If you have questions, drop them below — our team will do our very best to support you through this stage. And remember: you’re here because you care, and that already makes a difference. Offer yourself some grace. This is hard, but you’re doing better than you know. Keep going.
AUTHOR: BRITTANY MARSH
Britt is a qualified dietitian with years of experience in public health education through her work at UniSA and the Bachelor of Public Health program. She’s deeply passionate about empowering families with practical, evidence-based nutrition knowledge.
