Want your kids to make better food choices? Check out how one family is using Greenlight to help!

Kids are tough. Shopping for foods they’ll eat, making lunches, getting them to do their homework, getting them up and out the door on time, and getting them to put down their tech and go outside can be challenging. One of the biggest challenges we as parents face when it comes to kids is getting them to eat healthily.

But what if there was a better way? What if you didn’t have to rationalize that fries are made with potatoes and are therefore a vegetable? What if you could get your kids to start making healthy choices themselves?

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That’s what one family is trying. And they’re using Greenlight to power their “make your own healthy choices” experiment with her kids!

The Stevens’ were sick of hearing their kids complain about the lunches they packed and wasting food, so they came up with a solution: give them a budget on their Greenlight cards, set the boundaries of what they can eat, and then do their own grocery shopping. Here’s the story first hand from Mrs. Stevens:

We decided to give them each a weekly lunch budget of $25 and to plan a menu, then go shopping on Sunday. We encouraged them to be resourceful. Do you both want pasta? Whatever we have at home already, consider putting that on your list vs. buying something new. Pool your money and split everything if you want. Buy juice boxes or don’t…take a water bottle and save the money. We let them get whatever they wanted with only 2 restrictions:

1. You must have one decent entrée (Doritos are not an entrée), and

2. You must include one fruit or veggie. The rest, you decide.

I received the notification on the first Sunday while they were shopping that they spent $22.49 and $22.50, respectively. My husband said they bickered a little bit about what was on the menu, but he said it went well in the end, and a bonus: they both remembered their PINs!

We’ve all heard that getting kids involved in cooking makes them more likely to actually eat dinner, but getting them involved in shopping is pure genius! If kids pick their own foods, they’ll be more likely to actually eat them — and they’ll learn the value of budgeting and the downside of food waste at the same time.

If you’re using Greenlight in creative ways, we want to hear from you. Email us at support@greenlight.me with your stories.

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