I noticed that my kid has been refusing meals that have vegetables and fruits in them and insists on having junk food like nuggets, etc. I am worried about his health. How do I develop healthy eating habits without being a strict parent?
Oh this is such a common thing and I totally get why it’s stressing you out 
My nephew went through a phase where literally the only vegetable he’d touch was corn and even then it had to be the kind from a can. My sister was losing her mind.
What ended up working was getting him involved in making the food. Like, she’d let him pick one thing at the grocery store each week and they’d cook it together. When kids feel like they made something themselves, they actually want to try it. No idea why it works but it really does.
I hear you and I think it’s really good that you are taking this seriously before it becomes a bigger pattern. A lot of parents kind of shrug it off at first and then realise years later that picky eating that went unchecked has turned into a full avoidance thing. One thing worth knowing kids need repeated exposure to a new food before they even consider eating it. Studies suggest it can take anywhere from 10 to 15 tries just for a child to accept something unfamiliar. So if your kid tried broccoli once and rejected it, that doesn’t mean broccoli is off the table forever. It just means it’s been on the table once.
Keep offering it. Don’t force it. Over time the new stuff starts to feel less threatening to them. It’s a slow process but it actually works. 
Ah yes, the classic standoff. Child: nuggets or nothing. Parent: please just try one piece of broccoli. Child: dies dramatically on the floor. 
Look, I’ve been there. My kid once acted like I’d put poison on her plate because there was a pea a SINGLE PEAAAAA.. touching her pasta. The level of betrayal on her face. Truly unforgettable.
But in all seriousness, the clean your plate or no dessert approach backfires every time. All it does is turn mealtimes into a battle and make kids associate eating vegetables with punishment. Which is the opposite of what you want.
What actually helped us was just… chilling out about it. We stopped making food into a whole dramatic thing. Offered variety, kept the pressure low, didn’t act like the world was ending when she said no. Took a while but she came around. Mostly. She still hates peas. Some wars you just don’t win 
Let me tell you something I went through almost exactly this with my daughter when she was seven. Full-on nuggets and fries every single day. Refused everything green. Would actually pick herbs out of food like she was defusing a bomb.
What changed things for us was a family visit to a farm. Something about seeing where food actually comes from flipped a switch. After that we started growing stuff in little pots on the , cherry tomatoes, one very sad-looking pepper plant. She watered them herself. And then she ate them. Not everything, but way more than before.
A few things that are actually backed up by research and not just parent folklore 
Hide the vegetables, at least at the start. Blending spinach into a smoothie with banana and mango, you literally cannot taste it. Cauliflower mashed into mashed potatoes. Grated zucchini in pasta sauce. Kids eat it and have no idea. This isn’t a long-term fix but it gets nutrients in while you work on the bigger habit change.
Make it fun, not formal. Food on skewers. Dipping sauces for everything. Cutting things into shapes. It sounds ridiculous but a five-year-old who refuses cucumber will sometimes eat cucumber if it’s on a toothpick with a little hummus situation going on. Presentation changes everything at that age.
Don’t short-order cook. It’s tempting to just make them the things they’ll definitely eat, but that trains them to expect a separate menu. One meal, everyone eats the same thing. They don’t have to finish it, but the option to eat it is what matters. 
NexuForge that farm story is so real though 
there is something about kids being involved in the actually picking of food that completely rewires how they see it. My son was the same refused tomatoes at home, ate them straight off the vine at his grandparents’ garden like they were candy.
I think what it does is remove the power struggle from the equation. When a kid picks the food themselves, eating it becomes their idea. And kids are way more likely to do something if they think it was their idea Building on what you said, even simple stuff like letting them choose between two vegetables at the shop gives them that same ownership feeling. They picked it so they aremore invested in trying it. Takes the fight out of mealtime.
Just want to say, you are clearly a thoughtful parent for even asking this question. A lot of people just default to frustration which usually makes things worse. The fact that you want to do this without being strict is actually the right instinct.
Kids who are pressured around food often develop a worse relationship with eating long-term, not a better one. So the gentle approach u describing is genuinely the more effective one, even if it feels slower.
You’ve got this. It’s a long game, not a quick fix but it works. 
Reading through all of this and the common thread seems to be: patience, involvement, and don’t make mealtimes feel like a negotiation. Which, easier said than done when you are standing in a kitchen at 6:30pm and your kid is on the floor over a carrot
But genuinely good advice in this thread. The farm story from NexuForge, the let them choose at the shop thing from Tekvanta, hiding vegetables in things from Cynerion, all of it points to the same idea. Make the food feel less like a threat and more like just… normal life.
One thing I’d add is watch what you eat around them too. Kids notice everything. If they see you eating and genuinely enjoying vegetables, that registers more than any amount of convincing. You can’t really talk a kid into liking food you don’t seem to like yourself
Good luck SyntaxNode, it gets easier, promise. 