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Vegetables are a great way to provide the necessary vitamins and minerals to your family. However, how many times have you told your children to eat their vegetables? Probably a lot.

Most children seem to have an aversion to vegetables. They will push them around their plate, refuse to eat them and cry. Whether you are trying out vegetable soup recipes or good vegetable grill recipes, children know when you have sneaked healthy vegetables into their meal, and they will probably kick up a fuss.

Vegetables do not always have to be the enemy. The key is to find a creative way to prepare them and your family will become vegetable lovers rather than vegetable haters!

When you stop and think about it, when you were a child and your mother dropped a droopy, soggy, green hunk of broccoli on your plate, would you eat it? Probably not.

There are various ways to encourage your children to eat their vegetables. You might even need to trick them! Broccoli is an example of a vegetable, which is high in vitamin and mineral content, and there are plenty of ways to prepare it. Here are some tips:

Raw - you can put a plateful of raw broccoli in bite size pieces in the refrigerator, arranged around a little dish of salad dressing. Children love to dip their food and serving it in this way is something new for them. Leave the tips of the broccoli on the plate and either encourage your child to eat some or make a game of it. Grilled vegetable recipes are not the only way to prepare veggies.

If all else fails, bribery often works. Tell your child that they will get a special treat if they finish their vegetables. Make sure you have a treat for them afterwards.

Cheese - cheese and broccoli go together excellently. Adding a cheesy sauce changes the flavor and texture of the broccoli and your children might even prefer the cheesy broccoli to whatever else is on their plate. You can use cheese in vegetable soup recipes. This also works with good vegetable grill recipes. Most kids love a cheesy flavor.

Lasagna is delicious with broccoli added. Smothering it in cheese can add to the flavor and disguise the broccoli. Children will be too busy enjoying the cheesy flavor to bother picking out the bits of broccoli. Vegetable pizza is another way of sneaking in broccoli. Nearly all kids love pizza so a healthy vegetable pizza recipe will produce something they associate with fun rather than veggies.

Chop it up - if all else fails, pre cook the broccoli and let it cool a little and put it in a food processor. Chop it up until it is not recognizable and add it to whatever dish you are cooking. Your children will not even know it is there.

Shakes - this might sound weird but it works. Make a milkshake with milk, ice cream, and chocolate syrup. Add some broccoli to the shake (make sure the kids aren’t watching!) and blend it some more. As long as you use a chunky type of ice cream, your kids will not realize the broccoli is there and hopefully they will drink the shake too fast to notice any stray green bits!

These are just some of the ways you can encourage your children to eat vegetables and get more vitamins, minerals, and nutrients into their diet.