Let me warn you up front: this post may piss you off. Honest, I'm more subtle when dealing with clients, but since this is my blog, the gloves are off.
Everyone's heard about the cookbook debate. Did Jerry Seinfeld's wife rip off a nutritionist's cookbook? For the record, I doubt it. She's got kids, someone advised to "try this," it worked and since she's married to a celebrity, she had an in for getting a book published. End of story.
That's not what bothers me.
It's the whole idea of catering to our kids. THAT bothers me. Seriously, I've met people who always feed their kids separate meals, because the little tykes don't like "grown-up" food. This seems to be a big thing with the current crop of American parents, especially the middle/upper-income, educated group. I cringe every time I hear about it. What do these people think they're doing?
I can imagine how it gets started. New Mom home from the hospital has very little help or support and can't get the hang of breastfeeding. Maybe she has to go back to work. The hospital gave her formula, so why not use it? So Mom starts feeding the baby it's own special food, made bulk in a factory someplace and shipped in a cardboard or plastic container. When baby gets older, Mom and Dad buy the little jars of "baby food." Because it's a baby, right? Babies can't eat Real Food, can they? The parents never learned they could start with things like mashed potatoes, applesauce or bananas, rice cereal, etc., and as baby gets older they could just mash or blend up the food they eat and feed it to the kid. Graduate to cutting the real food into tiny pieces so an older baby can eat those. They don't NEED THOSE JARS OF BABY FOOD!
But Mom and Dad are now well convinced that the child must have special food. It's always had special food. So they never actually give the child the food that Mom and Dad are eating. And suddenly, we have an incredibly picky child who won't try anything except quesadillas and boxed macaroni & cheese, or pizza. With just cheese. Along with anything from McDonald's or Taco Bell, of course.
Look. If you're serving fresh, homemade meals with lots variety and vegetables, you're kids are not going to starve if they don't like something! Even if they don't like lots of things and at every meal, they're hiding something under the plate or surreptitiously feeding the dog under the table. It's OKAY.
Just keep feeding them. Don't make a special meal. Heck, don't even argue with them. Just serve the food, eat it yourself, clean up the kitchen (or have the kids do it) and get on with your life. Don't give them snacks later. They should have no other options except what you prepared for dinner.
They'll figure it out. You can encourage them, you can dress up the veggies with sauces or seasonings or cheese or anyway that you like to eat them. Serve them plain once in a while, but make things look attractive on the plate. Place a slice of lemon on the broccoli. A tiny pat of butter on the peas. Let the kids use the salt and pepper shakers. And if they turn up their noses and only eat the meat and potatoes, so what? I promise, if you keep serving them, if you cook them skillfully, and make them look nice, someday the kid will surprise you and start eating it.
Maybe they'll try it at a friend's house or at a restaurant and decide it's okay. After all, you're just Mom, what do you know? But somebody else's mom, or a chef somewhere, can give them something and they'll go for it. It's the nature of the beast.
Expose them to food. Let them watch the Food Network or those silly chef competitions. Take them to the farmer's market. Take them to a "pick your own" orchard. Have them flip through the cookbooks and choose a meal for you to cook. Let them help cook. Plant a garden. Get their school to plant a garden. Make food fun. Enjoy it yourself.
But DON'T cook them special meals. You'll still be doing it when they're teenagers and they will not be grateful. They'll think they deserve it and you're the one to provide it. Makes me shudder.
3 comments:
You make a very good point -- though I can see how exhausted parents might be desperate to get their kids to eat anything from the plant world, and this cookbook might do the trick. The NYTimes had an interesting article a few weeks ago about picky eaters, and how it's probably an inherited trait ... but it's still so important to get kids to understand that food is good, and tastes good, and is good for you, even if they don't like spinach :)
For ideas on making your own baby food I really like this website http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/ .
Making your own baby food is really simple, especially if you already make healthy meals (i.e. mash up some of the steamed sweet potatoes for baby before you add milk and butter to mash them for yourself). My 11-month-old loves to eat baby food, including carrots and sweet potatoes. Plus, I can add in lots of good stuff the industrial manufacturers never think of, like flax seed oil or turkey stock full with all the minerals from the bones.
Eating real food really helps kids like eating veggies. Who really wants to eat peas that taste like a salty tin can? I think children are naturally predisposed to reject such abnormalities. When I was growing up my parents kept a small veggie patch, >1 acre of corn, potatoes, beans, and onions. I hated veggies, but when my mom would pull a bag of our farm beans from the freezer for dinner - yum! Beans from a tin can on the other hand, how many ways can I say "bleh"? Want kids to eat veggies? Give them the real thing.
Allelujah! I am glad you posted this blogspot. I don't currently have any kids of my own, but I have many kids in my life and friends with kids, family members with kids and I do a lot of babysitting. I am so sick and tired of all of the parents out there willing to cater to their kids meals by cooking them special meals or worse, taking them to McDonald's because they are fed up. But they are not realizing that they are forcing bad habits on their child now that will stick with them throughout their entire adult lives. I am not a nutritionist but I do cook and I do make healthy meals every single night that are good tasting - I come from a long line of professional chefs and have learned how to cook. Maybe that's the problem. Parents should stop buying "pre-fab" foods from the supermarket that honestly don't taste good and learn how to cook. It's not rocket science.
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