Oct25

Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Child Obesity, Obesity and Weight Loss, Recipes, Uncategorized, Wellness and Health

Avoiding and treating child obesity is not the only reason to get kids to eat vegetables.

It’s helping them start on a lifetime of flavorful eating.  Flavor is the missing ingredients in many good-for-you foods because too many adults lack the simple cooking, shopping and choosing skills to make vegetables taste good.

That problem goes away if you buy local, by the way. The freshest vegetables usually need the least cooking.

The usual place kids find flavor is junk and fast foods. And that warps their palates, and quite possibly, sets up an addiction cycle…if their brains work like adults’.

Thursday I’m doing 4 easy kids recipes for the Foodbank: Sweet Crunchy Jicama Sticks, Parmesan Kale Chips, Warm Stuffed Dates and BBQ Tofu.  Total kitchen time: 30 minutes!

The secret here is not disguising the veggies, or adding extra sugar/coatings/junk, but making them appealing on their own. Surprisingly, this isn’t popular as two other approaches:

  • Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious is about hiding the carrots in the meatloaf, and the zucchini in the bread.  That  makes the parent feel better, and does get vegetable into the kid. But a vegetable is not a pill, or a medicine.
  • Weelicious is about fun: great photos and spunk. Sugar and coatings are on zucchini and carrots. It’s easy peasy for the stressed parent of a baby or toddler who wants more health. Vegetable is usually a seasoning, instead of the main event.

Is there a better way? We’ll find out, at the Foodbank of Santa Barbara and its reception and benefit this Thursday 10.28.10

 
  • http://weigh2rock.com Robert Pretlow, MD

    I applaud your efforts to devise ways that healthy food might compete with junk food and fast food. Food companies have extensive, well-funded food science divisions, whose sole purpose is to make their products as irresistible as possible. Typically, added sugar, salt, fat, and high tech flavorings are used to do so, rendering the foods “hyperpalatable.” As you note, such hyperpalatable foods can be addicting and lead to uncontrolled overeating in kids, with resulting childhood obesity. Perhaps hyperpalatable foods should actually be regarded as “dangerous foods,” not too dissimilar from the label “dangerous drugs?” Thus, our goal should be to offer foods to kids that are flavorful, but not hyperpalatable, and to educate kids and parents about the addictive hazards of hyperpalatable foods. Junk food might then be viewed as “yuck!” Your flavorful, healthy recipes are a marvelous way to do this! – RP

  • http://www.drjohnlapuma.com DrLaPuma

    Thanks, Dr Pretlow…I think the secret is making food really fun for kids, so they’re not seduced by foods that zap their energy, endanger their health and make them less of who they are, and want to be. Recipes are an easy way in–I’m teaching kale chips and cauliflower popcorn to parents these days, so they’ll make them with and for their kids!

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