How do you get kids to eat more vegetables? Reports show that kids tend not to enjoy eating veggies at school lunches, often discarding them uneaten.
This is not a joke: At the recent meeting of the American Society for the Advancement of Science a radical new method was discussed. Researchers have found that putting sugar on top of the veggies makes kids like them more:
In the community, 2 of 3 preschoolers preferred vegetables lightly misted with small amounts of sweetener to plain vegetables. Serving lightly sweetened vegetables weekly across 4 weeks was associated with increases in vegetable intake compared with little change for preschoolers served plain vegetables.
Great. So now that kids are already addicted to sweet junk food we’re going to give up and put sugar in everything they eat?
Crazy times.
There’s another, better, solution. My 17 months-old daughter loves veggies like broccoli and carrots, she can’t get enough of them. Why? Her veggies are fried in butter. A healthy choice: Butter is better.
I'm pretty sure that the children of the eskimos were perfectly healthy even though they didn't consume vegetables.
I'm going to steal this.
Most everything (all nutrients) can be found in animal derived products.
Adding a bunch of finely cut fresh herbs into the sauce (fatty sauce), when serving a meat or seafood dish, with some added spices, are a more than sufficient replacement. And it tastes more appealing too.
Of course, adding some butter, cheese, or double cream will make any vegetable more palatable, but that does not fit well with the low-fat craze, and fat is expensive.
Hey, put it on all the "healthy" foods you are supposed to eat.
After all, Comrade Lenin said 'the end, justifies the means."
I use a ketogenic diet to control my neurological disorder, and it also makes me generally healthy. I found out that the green veggies it the way to go for the people who want to eat a high-fat diet - great fat carriors.
I really had a hard time with everyone around me saying what an indifferent mother I was letting him eat only his meat dishes, full fat yoghurt, whole milk and the nuts that he loves so much and occasionally potatoes.
They told me I wasnt giving him 'proper nutrition'. They told me I was going to 'make him fat'. He is so healthy, and smart and active and NOT fat. His naturtal instincts haven't been destroyed.
Let's not use vegetables as another way to get our children addicted to sugar. I would rather not give vegetables than sweeten them.
The other day the girlfriend bought some meat from the butcher and he prepped it by cutting off the fat! She was like "hey, my boyfriend eats all the fat, can you put it back in?".
The butcher weighed the meat, then put the "offcuts" fat back in for free!
I've found fat and fatty cuts of meat to be the cheapest around - *because* of the low-fat lunacy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtuZLCI7LRI
I think the answer to the problem 'kid won't eat veggies' is to be persistent and offer a wide variety of tasty meals and keep the house free of crap-food. And if they keep refusing... well they will get hungry at one point.
"Hunger is the best sauce."
Kids will eat whatever you give them. If you tell them "eat your veggies to get your dessert" you are telling them veggies are boring.
My mother always served us a great variety of veggies and I remember loving most of them. Veggies are actually pretty good. Probably kids who don't want to eat them were told by their parents that they were "boring" food.
- Kurt, editor of Weight Rater
I hated all vegetables when I was a kid and I hate most vegetables now too. Although I do enjoy tomato, bell pepper, chillies etc. aswell as Sauerkraut, but THATS IT.
It is possible to have cravings for veggies and green staff, and in my mind it allows me to suspect there is some reason for it. I remember a moment from the movie about animals made by David Attenborough, when after a raid on another group of chimpanzees , the group members who won were eating teared apart baby chimpanzees killed during the ride. I remember watching how they were snacking on some fresh leaves to supplement the meat and looking like gourmands in the proses.
When I was a child, we didn't have a fresh produce whole year round ,and I also remember how we (adults and children) craved something fresh and green by the end of the winter, and first green cucumbers at the end of February were considered to be a delicacy. We also kept an onion bulb in a jar with water on a windowsill and used growing green shots in soups and added it to our sauerkraut.
To the veggies you mentioned I would add onions, garlic and herbs. Sauerkraut is grate with sliced raw onions. Green leaves with salt and vinegar could be a very fitting addition to a meat dish (if you don't worry about food being too palatable). I also like eggplants.
http://diagnosisdiet.com/food/vegetables/
There may actually be very good reasons why kids hate these things:)