Jennifer Garner gives her kids vegetables before dinner so they’ll eat them

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On a programming note I was tempted to use that annoying strategy of not revealing the whole point of the story in the title, like “Jennifer Garner’s simple mom hack for getting kids to eat vegetables.” I usually end up disappointed when I open those so I didn’t want to subject you to that too. The title is obvious – Garner gives her kids cut up raw vegetables while she’s cooking. That way they’ll eat their veggies because they’re hungry and there are no other immediate options for foo. I do this too. I make my son cut up carrots, peppers, cucumbers, whatever is the fridge, when he gets home from school. He gets some healthier options while he’s doing his homework and then he can have the main course when it’s ready. Anyway Garner shared some more thoughts, about junk food and picking fruit fresh from the garden with her kids, with People. She’s of course talking about this to promote her organic baby food line, Once Upon a Farm. She’s been all over the place promoting that recently.

In this week’s issue of PEOPLE the actress says she is “pretty strict” when it comes to not letting her kids Violet, 12, Seraphina, 9, and Samuel, 6, eat junk food.

“I’m not worried so much about junk food, because we don’t have it in the house—although I don’t want to be a freak about it, so that they just want to get their hands on it at all costs,” she says. “It’s more that you just want to make sure they’re getting a rainbow of flavors and of foods.

“I think growing your own food helps,” she says. “When I was a kid, I didn’t like tomatoes, but then my mom grew cherry tomatoes, and if I picked them straight off the vine, they tasted so good. My oldest didn’t like blueberries until we had blueberry bushes. Now in blueberry season we take colanders down every night and they bring their friends over and we pick.”

During dinner time, she takes another page out of her mom’s book, by leaving fresh chopped veggies out while she’s finishing the main meal.

“My mom always said that if the house is smelling good and everyone is hungry,” she says, “your kids will get their veggies that way by eating a bunch of raw broccoli and carrots and tomatoes.”

[From Facebook]

We’re not a “no junk food” house I just teach my son portion control. (Sometimes my personal version of portion control is a half pint of ice cream for dinner after salad for lunch, I’ll be honest.) He’s 13 years old and can eat a large amount of food. For “junk food” I just keep things like single serving chips packets, single serve pizzas, popcorn and ice cream in the house. That way, he has options but he has to get up and make an effort if he wants to eat more. That seems to work but I can’t really tell since he can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight anyway. I know it’s different with little kids, they’re not bottomless pits of hunger, it’s just my philosophy to give them treats in small amounts and let them know they’re not forbidden. It sounds like Garner does that, she just doesn’t keep any in the house.

Also Garner told People she’s not going to put out a cookbook or do a cooking show despite all the cooking advice and videos she shares on Instagram. Plus she just hung out with Ina Garten AND Martha Stewart (not at the same time, although those two are allegedly friends) .I thought that a cooking show was the next step for her given her latest moves, but her acting career has really been talking off. Maybe it’s a backup plan.

There are photos of Garner outside Ben Affleck’s house on 7-17-18 and outside Good Morning America on 7-16-18. I didn’t cover that because she didn’t say anything new, but here’s a link to her interview. Also she’s wearing black with navy, right? I’ve seen that color combination on some of the fashion blogs but I would be too scared to try it. Photos credit: Backgrid and WENN

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24 Responses to “Jennifer Garner gives her kids vegetables before dinner so they’ll eat them”

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  1. SM says:

    Oh my God, I do that too sometimes, though my kid now does eat his vegetables with dinner as long as they are carefully cut and not mixed like salad.

    • Char says:

      I didn’t ate any vegetables outside potato, rice and beans for almost 30 yrs of my life and suddenly turned into a vegetarian and started loving them. So, there’s always hope in case kids don’t want it now (I did made my parents crazy for years).

    • Lunde says:

      I was just telling my daughter (now in her 20s) about doing this yesterday. I was amazing how much more attractive some cut carrots, peppers, cucumber etc was – before dinner rather than during dinner! These days she eats all vegetables.

  2. Becks1 says:

    My kids always try the veggies I’m cutting up* but then usually spit them out, LOL.

    *I’m not the healthiest cook in the world. The amount of veggies I’m cutting up is usually pretty small to be honest haha.

    but I do find for the kids and for me the easiest way to eat relatively healthy is just to not have junk food in the house. I don’t ban it, we get ice cream as a treat, or snowballs, or if we’re out to eat they order dessert, etc, and we do have things that are “sweeter” like granola bars and graham crackers. I just find if I don’t buy cookies, candy, ice cream, etc for the house then things are easier because I don’t eat it all, lol.

  3. Maya says:

    I used to eat the vegetables raw whenever my mother was cooking. I used to eat almost all of them that my mother used to bar me from the kitchen haha.

    • Whatever says:

      Same, I really loved raw veggies when I was a kid. Cooked ones I didn’t like very much, I thought the texture was strange. I totally ended up eating half of what my mom was chopping up during meal preparations. Or just ate tomatoes or belt peppers straight and unwashed from our garden 😂

    • Dora says:

      I cultivate in pots on the veranda some vegetables as cherry tomatoes, lettuce, parsley, coriander,onions and also some aromatic plants as origanum, mint, basil, rosemary and laventer. They smell very nice and I make delicious salads with olive oil and lemon almost every day for the family. With aromatics I can make different teas hot or colds. I love these plants very much. It is joy and relaxation. Unfortunately, i don’t have a big garden but i am happy for people who have a nice garden. Good luck for Jennifer G. and her children.

      • Catriona says:

        If you only have a little space, herbs are a great way to utilise it. Also green onions, if you like them. I just moved and am looking to get a lil herb garden of my own going at my new home. It makes the most difference from the smallest space. “Apartment Gardening” by Amy Pennington is my guide.

        Cherry tomatoes off the vine sounds amazing!

    • Cate says:

      I did this too! And my son does it now…if I’m chopping up vegetables, he pops up at my elbow “I want some!”. He’s only 2, sometimes he eats the vegetable and comes back for more, sometimes he spits it out. Whatever, at this point I’m not going to discourage him from trying or eating vegetables.

      We also don’t keep a lot of junk/sugar in the house, hoping to keep it that way as our son gets older. I am fine with having it on special occasions but cookies, chips, etc. are not good to be having as a regular snack.

  4. Patricia says:

    I haven’t found a single packaged babyfood, organic or not, that tastes very good. For real even the plain butternut squash has a strange taste when mass produced and put in a jar.
    Making baby food is incredibly easy. I just roast a butternut squash (or sweet potato, any other root veggie) in the oven for a while then cut it up, purée it and freeze what won’t get eaten within a few days. You get literally ten or more servings from one squash.
    Boil some carrots with cinnamon and ginger, purée, or boil some peas, you have a ton of baby food. Purée some ripe pears, freeze, I could go on and on.
    It’s all so easy to make, not time consuming, not expensive. I am starting to think that most packaged baby food in general is a scam. If a parent is in the kitchen for even a few hours a week cooking for the family, he or she can totally make the baby food also. And it tastes a lot better than even the fanciest organic canned stuff and is way more cost effective also.

    • N says:

      My son used to love veggies when I pureed them. I never bought baby food because it had no taste at all and he also hated it.
      However, he’s now almost 3 and puree is not an option for him. He needs to taste everything before he decides, he’s going to eat it and most of the things I give him are either “yuck”, “yucky” or “bleeehhh” 🙂

      • Patricia says:

        Yes, it definitely gets harder to feed them as they get older! My son just turned 4. He will love something once, then decide he’s not even going to consider it the next time he sees it. It’s tiring for sure! He’s eaten cereal for dinner on nights when there’s a perfectly healthy cooked meal more times than I’d like to admit.

      • Nicole76705 says:

        Same here, likes it once and the next time I make it, he hates it. When they’re 4 it comes down to picking your battles. Plus, it’s likely a phase.

        I was pretty proud of myself yesterday, cut up some cucumbers for dinner, and he starts munching on them again around bedtime and says “if you’re still hungry after dinner, you can eat cucumbers.” Score! I’m doing something right 🙂

  5. Mia4s says:

    Yeah, her acting career is taking off in a series from Lena Dunham and by playing a revenge fantasy about a white suburban mom fighting an evil gang of Latino stereotypes. F**k off. Please put out the cookbook instead.

    • kate says:

      Urgh, I had forgotten she had a show with Lena-I-still-haven’t-apologized-to-the-black-rape-victim-I-called-a-liar Dunham. She should be shunned.

  6. Esmom says:

    Thank you, CB, for not deploying the word “hack,” lol. It drives me crazy at this point.

    Everything she says makes sense although I’ll say a vegetable garden is generally a luxury. They’re lucky they can grow so many things but most people cannot. I get it, though, that fresh picked always taste best. I didn’t like blueberries until the time we went picking at a farm when I was a kid and I ended up loving them.

  7. Liz says:

    My daughter prefers her veggies raw, so who am I to stop her? It certainly makes my life easier – “Sweetheart, can you please snap the string beans while I’m making the chicken & rice?” I know that only half the string beans will actually make it back to me – she will have eaten the rest (and fed the snapped ends to the dog). Win-win.

  8. Shannon says:

    Not having something in the house is the best way. I stopped buying soda or any sugary drinks – all I keep to drink in the house is cold water and milk. My son hated it at first, but now even when he’s at someone else’s house he’ll request water. I do the same with chips and candy – it doesn’t mean he can’t have them, or an occasional sugary drink, but since it’s not in the kitchen it turns out to be a treat that I have to make a special trip to get. He got a clean bill of ‘no cavities’ yesterday at the dentist, and that made me soooo happy.

    I like her, but black & navy? Oh no. I have never been able to stand that combo, sorry.

  9. Aang says:

    Shredded carrots mixed with apples was my kids fav when they were little. Now they are vegetarian, almost vegan but they eat eggs, and eat what seems like a cows worth of veggies every day. Fruit, veg, eggs, a little brown bread. I wish I ate like my kids eat.

  10. Carolnr says:

    I cut up my fresh fruits & vegetables into containers & put them in the fridge so they are ready to eat or use for a dinner entree.

    For blueberries & especially raspberries, i make a vinegar bath of 1 cup white vinegar & 8 cups water. These keeps them from getting moldy so quickly! We also put this on our pumpkins for fall.( i put them out around the 1st of Oct.) We have never had a moldy pumpkin, since!!!

  11. Tiffany says:

    You know, now that she has gotten rid of about 290 lbs* (HA !!!) of dead weight, Garner is not as…annoying to me anymore.

    • Dora says:

      I agree. She reorganized her life and she is happy. Freedom is very sweet after years of problems and emotional stress. Working with plants is a good medicine for stress and depression.

    • yara says:

      They aren’t divorced and may never finalize it, so she hasn’t really dropped any dead weight. With the exception of his living in another home and having a girlfriend, not much has changed.

  12. raincoaster says:

    I used to be a nanny, and I’d do that too. When the kids start bugging you about when dinner is ready, you give them a plate of hummus or salsa and some veg, and say they can eat all they want. They dont’ ever eat too much, they always have room for the protein, and it buys you a lot of peaceful time in the kitchen.