Food for Thought: Can You Beat the Kid Food Conspiracy?

Hint: It's not about hiding vegetables

Every first time parent approaches the task of parenting with a mixture of naivety and self-righteousness.   But the one hill that most parents die on is food.  And it’s a futile, pointless death, both tragic and utterly predictable.

We start off thinking that OUR KID will be different that every other kid who has ever been born.  OUR KID will not develop a taste for sugar – they will enjoy fruit and greens.  OUR KID will eat the same meals as we do – no short order cooking around here.  OUR KID will try new things and not whine for chicken fingers and fries.  That’s lazy parenting right there, can’t you see?  If you make these things a priority, yadda, yadda, yadda.

And it works for a while, doesn’t it?  The little spawn cheerfully shoves kale and lovingly de-boned organic salmon into their maw.  We post triumphal pictures of adorable avocado-smeared moppets on our Instagram with #cleaneatingkids and #blessed (okay, maybe not #blessed, we do have a little shame), and try to hide our smug smiles as we grind carrots through a food mill and mix them with yogurt.

The first mistake is the self-congratulations.

Life gets in the way.  The ice cream truck is coming down the street!  What’s one cookie from Gramma?  They see other kids at daycare throw a fit about crusts on their sandwich and get away with it!  Chicken nuggets? OMG!

Before we know it we are pleading about “one more bite”, grating veggies into “plain” pasta sauce and Googling “dinner kids less stressful how”.

So much for our arrogance, eh?

But a bit of pickiness is actually proof that our kids aren’t dumb – just shoving any old thing in the mouth (especially those ever-so-slightly bitter vegetables) would have, in an evolutionary sense, been a recipe for a disaster.

So how do I get my kiddo to eat in spite of the world’s plot to make mealtimes a giant pain?  Can you even fight back against the chicken finger conspiracy?

(Here is where I note that I am NOT a doctor/pediatrician, dietician, occupational therapist, and am only telling you what I’ve done, not giving you advice directly)

1.       I kept the definition of normal as broad as possible, as early as possible. When it came time to introduce solid food I went looking for advice beyond rice cereal. What did parents in India feed their babies?  In Korea? How did they introduce what many people think of as spicy or pungent flavours? Turns out to be pretty simple really.  Spices are often introduced just as foods are – in small quantities and one at a time.  So I started mixing in turmeric (don’t do that with light coloured clothes and bibs LOL), coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon with the apple and sweet potato puree and kept on going. In Korea they rinse a bit of the spicy stuff off the kimchi to start. I started putting a drop or two of sriracha in the scrambled eggs.  Despite advice in a previous post I added parsley to everything because, hey, a lot of food has green bits and the sooner you accept it as normal the better.

2.       I looked for gateway drugs.  My kiddo still doesn’t love everything I pick up at my nearest Asian market (leafy green stuff is a challenge, TBH) but she freaks out with happiness when we grab some char siu (BBQ pork) buns and can eat her weight in spring rolls.  We always pick out a new type of cookie or candy.  We make it fun, picking new stuff is an adventure, and we can start with the stuff that’s easy to like.

3.       No one has to like everything.  There are plenty of things I don’t like and I’ve only come around to things like ketchup and eggplant in my 40s.  I accept that some foods aren’t going to get more than a sniff, poke, and maybe a lick.  I just accept that pushing it around the plate the first dozen times is part of the process and with some things it may never happen. I make a particular effort to let the kiddo see me try something I don’t like and describe what I do like about it and what I don’t like. Maybe the issue isn’t the taste of celery but rather the texture. A spit-out bite with actual descriptive words is a big step beyond a sullen “no”.

4.       We don’t “yuck someone’s yum”.  It’s okay not to like things but it is NOT okay to exclaim “Gross!” or “Ew!” or make other proclamations of disgust within earshot of anyone. Aside from it being basic good manners and showing sensitivity to unfamiliar things, it’s also good practice for a lifetime of situations where keeping your trap shut is a basic life skill. Your opinion isn’t part of the recipe, kiddo.

5.       Snobbery is uncool.  It’s one thing to make healthy meals at home on a regular basis; it’s another thing to loudly diss fast food and moralize over “junk”.  I don’t sweat McWhatever once in a while, we have a stash of gummy candy from the dollar store, and I’m not at all averse to that pasta stuff with powdered cheese that comes in a blue box (forget the blue box, buy the store brand!)  If I make it forbidden or attach moral value to something it either becomes more attractive and/or a source of guilt, and I sure don’t want that! Any parent who yammers on about “toxic sugar” and “poisonous additives” and “carbs” or whatever pseudo-science the clean-eating squad has dredged up is setting their kid on a path to be a snob and/or have an eating disorder.

6.       Consider the big picture.  Some days the kiddo eats everything in sight – breakfast, lunch and dinner were all winners.  Some days I wonder how she survives on air.  But I take the long view – we went through a whole bag of apples, a whole bag of carrots, and a whole heap of other healthy food this week. Kiddo asks for Japanese curry, will eat nearly anything if it’s on a pizza, devours turnips without commentary, and is a pleasure to take to any restaurant. It somehow all balances out.

Being a parent is, in my experience at least, a revelation about how little we really know about anything, and how easy it would be to fall back on well-meaning but ultimately failed and damaging messages about food.  We’ve come a long way from the “clean your plate club” or we hope we have!  The goal isn’t to get a sobbing child to eat an artichoke, is it?  It’s to get them to eventually LIKE eating a variety of foods and not be “that friend” whose mere presence vetoes most of the interesting restaurant choices. Children are individuals like we are and subject to a world of messages and influences that we can’t always control. We can’t control every bite that goes in their little mouths but we can control the attitudes we share. We all have to eat so let’s remember it’s a joy and not a chore.