What kids eat - tales from parents and lunchrooms
The Expatriate's Kitchen is a great food blog that especially shines for its thoughtful advice on getting kids to eat their vegetables.
Like many adults I know, I was a picky eater as a kid, and only started sampling strange foods after I left college. I've discovered that I like almost everything I formerly thought was gross.
Kids may have good reasons to be wary of vegetables - in nature, an adventurous eater might pick up something poisonous. That's my own theory, anyway, and it could explain why kids are so big on eating foods they recognize. The Expatriate Chef recommends a strategy of giving the kid lots of exposure to the vegetables you want to demystify. She writes about the idea that a kid has to be exposed to a food about 15 times before they'll want to eat it.
Sometimes "exposed" just means it's on the [plate] alongside some favorites, and that you eat and enjoy the food as your child watches. ... Sneaking vegetables into foods in the form of purees or hidden ingredients doesn't help kids embrace a new food or learn about it, even if it gets the item eaten.
So I thought of the Expatriate Chef when I heard about two new books on sneaking pureed veggies into kids' food. Here's some of what she had to say:
I have a philosophical problem with "deception" and "food." Watching the headlines and issues, there is quite enough deception going on with our food supply already. I don't need to add to it on a personal level.
... vegetables are not some sleazy gastronomic affair to be carried on in a dark pantry. Treating them like this only reinforces the concept of vegetable=yuck when you are found out.
To be honest, I really don't understand the whole "I don't like vegetables" thing. Corn tastes nothing like broccoli, winter squash and summer squash are as different as, well, winter and summer. There is no universal "vegetable" flavor to be disliked. Except maybe "canned" vegetable flavor. Arguably, the source, freshness and preparation of a vegetable matters just as much as the variety does.
Here is the Children's Nutrition Series on Expatriate's Kitchen: 9 posts on why kids eat what they do, and how to make sure they're learning from their veggie-eating parents and not from TV or branded toy junk food or even school lunches.
Which reminds me of another interesting story in the news this week: Local New York carrots might be coming to NYC schools. The carrots' journey, though, is ridiculous. The schools have to buy carrots from the lowest bidder. Somehow, the carrots would only be acceptable as bagged individual portions (school staff is too busy to slice carrots). Then, a local farmer had to be persuaded to grow the variety of carrot ("Sugar Snax") that can be whittled into so-called baby carrots. But it turns out that Sugar Snax doesn't grow so well in NY, and you lose 70% of the carrot during the whittling process anyway. Finally, the local carrot project is moving forward with carrots that will be sliced, crinkle-style, by machines in Michigan.
Is all of that really easier than slicing a few carrots in the cafeteria? Cornell's dining halls say they use 23% local food. Do they know something the NYC cafeterias don't?