Helping Your Kids Learn to Love Vegetables

Posted By elissa on Oct 2, 2008 | 1 comment

This is something I confront on my forums all the time: people who a) want to lose weight or improve their health; but b) eat little or no vegetables, or plant foods of any kind.  Some have simply fallen out of the habit; while others are clinging to childhood memories of gray-green, plain boiled yeeechh.  It’s the latter group that’s the hardest to budge, as they’re resolutely convinced that they just HATE veggies, despite the fact that there are tons of wonderful ways to serve them, that don’t involve cooking them to death.

There are times I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back and “fix” their childhoods. In my opinion, if you learn to like veggies as a kid, then it’s no problem as an adult. I wasn’t a huge veggie eater myself as young ‘un, but I loved salad and cole slaw…along with vegetable soup and stir-fried broccoli, which certainly paved the way.

But it’s a perennial problem for a lot of parents: how to get kids to eat veggies? I know I had this problem, and for a while, there was nothing on Earth that could induce Number One Son to eat even a single bite of something green. And I know I wasn’t alone.

There are a couple of schools of thought on how to deal with this: one is to conceal veggies in foods that your kids like…y’know, like adding spinach puree to brownies and smooshed cauliflower to mashed potatoes.  I’ll admit that I tried that approach with my own kids, but it was doomed from the start.  For one thing, it was a real PITA; and for another, it didn’t seem that they really got anything out of it anyway. 

But apparently this is still a pretty popular option, what with cookbooks like “Deceptively Delicious” and “The Sneaky Chef” about.  But I find myself agreeing with author Mimi Sheraton, who points out:

1. This involves lying to your kids.
2. It teaches the wrong message: that sweets and starchy foods are “good for you.”
3. It makes vegetables unrecognizable, and reinforces the idea that actual veggies are icky.
4. They don’t really get that much nutrition out of it anyway.

So I opted for the other…trying to find appetizing ways to serve veggies, and – above all – setting an example.  Sheraton’s experience was something like mine:

“I’ll admit that getting a kid to down peas, string beans, or broccoli that he or she hates can be a discouraging chore. In this I speak from experience as the mother of a son who, until about the age of 14, hated all vegetables, except potatoes, corn, and raw carrot sticks and who once declared that the only edible green food was green noodles. Deciding not to turn every meal into a contest, I began only offering him small portions of those he liked, along with peeled, sliced pears, apples, peaches, and other seasonal fruits that he substituted for veggies.

Another great favorite with him—as with most children I know—was authentic (no funny business) olive-oil-based Italian tomato sauce, either with or without meat. Simmered with onion, finely diced carrot, and garlic that disappeared into an amalgam in the cooking, combined with a generous tossing of minced Italian parsley added in the last few seconds, that sauce gave him considerable vegetable credits. And I did not always serve this over starchy pasta, but ladled it over meatballs, chicken, fish, or finally, as it is often served in southern Italy, over broccoli, the first green vegetable I remember him eating—and liking—until one magical day he suddenly seemed to like almost all.

Therein lies a solution no more demanding than what is required in either of these stealth cookbooks—namely, coming up with recipes that don’t force vegetables to masquerade as treats, presenting them in forms that appeal to young palates. Instead of compromising lasagna, or tuna fish, or mashed potatoes with strongly flavored cauliflower, why not Japanese tempura or Italian fritto misto versions of cauliflower florets and other cut-up vegetables? Kids seem to love anything fried and crisp; fortunately, careful, quick frying at the right temperature in light vegetable oil minimizes the health dangers of that cooking method.”

Like her, I found things that my kids found tolerable…in our case, Asian stir fry dishes like Almond Chicken, pasta primavera (topped with lots of parmesan cheese) and split pea chowder (which I added diced carrots to).  Salads were also something they warmed to…I learned to look the other way when they ladled on the dressing.

Another one of the things that helped soften my kids’ attitudes towards veggies, was to grow a vegetable garden.  We had the usual tomatoes, corn, zucchini and string beans…we even grew our own pumpkins for Halloween.  This is the same approach that chef Alice Waters recommends, and is implementing via her “Edible Schoolyard” program.

“In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We’ve been working on it for 12 years. We’ve learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it. And we’re talking about kale and chard; we’re not talking about sweets. We’re talking about the connection these kids make with what they’re doing, and how they’re building their self-esteem and how enjoyable it is to come back to nature.”

Moral of the story: it’s a good idea to help kids learn to like (or at least tolerate) veggies while they’re young – it does take patience and some creativity, but with a little effort, it won’t be an issue when they’re adults (and asking for dietary advice on one of my forums!).