When my 2-year-old son began to prefer string cheese and croutons over peas and cauliflower, I tried to get creative—first by imitating the artistic approach to vegetables I remembered from my childhood. Ants on a log And next Cucumber larvae and Hummus Monster With carrot teeth. My young daughter was only mildly amused. Then I turned to persuasion, repeating how delicious bok choy was and how spinach would energize her. Most of the time, I was lucky if I could get even a bite of anything green within an inch of her mouth.
So I turned to Instagram and TikTok and quickly discovered that one veggie trick stood out above the rest: hide your child’s least favorite veggies in a dish they do love. Do your kids love pancakes? Mix in some spinach powder.Macaroni and cheese? Its distinctive orange color Comes from carrotsCauliflower and broccoli Pizza sauce.
Sneak smuggling tactics predate social media. Surprisingly delicious and Secret Chef: Simple strategies for hiding healthy foods in your child’s favorite mealsIt became a hot topic on TV shows and other media. The Oprah Winfrey Show And that today Stealth Cooking aired in the late 2000s. It’s amazing why stealth cooking has become so popular, considering how much work it requires. For example, making chicken nuggets with pureed beets from scratch takes an extra hour than buying a bag of regular chicken nuggets from the supermarket. But if it helps your toddler get the recommended cup or cup and a half of vegetables each day, isn’t it worth it?
The nutrition experts I spoke to said not so: “Kids generally don’t need to go to such lengths to eat their vegetables,” Laura Thomas, a nutritionist and director of the London Centre for Intuitive Eating, told me.
Of course, vegetables have a lot of health benefits. Some studies have linked eating vegetables to a reduced risk of some chronic diseases, including heart disease. But those studies look at vegetable intake over many years, not just what people eat during early childhood. And even if many U.S. kids aren’t meeting dietary guidelines for vegetables, Thomas says that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re nutritionally deficient. study Despite their veggie-phobic reputation, toddlers, on average, get enough calcium, vitamin A, and iron, a study published in 2018 found. Toddlers tend to be deficient in potassium and fiber, but kids (and adults) can absorb those important nutrients from meat, nuts, beans, whole grains, and other non-green foods. “There’s very little that’s specific to vegetables that you can’t get from other foods,” Thomas says.
Ignoring vegetables isn’t an ideal long-term solution, because many of the foods we tend to eat instead of them are higher in calories and lower in fiber. But in the short term, embracing substitutions can help your toddler get through his pickiest years without getting scurvy. And the point is, hiding vegetables among bread, meat, and sugary foods still means your child is eating a lot of bread, meat, and sugar. No matter how many vegetables you eat, you can’t counteract the harmful effects of excess sugar.
Leading nutritionists and child-development experts have been urging parents for years to stop pressuring or coaxing their kids into eating their veggies, but health-conscious parents just can’t seem to let go of the blender. That may not be down to picky kids, but rather the health messaging and fad diets their elders have endured for years. “Millennials grew up on ‘clean eating,’ and they still haven’t let go of that baggage,” Thomas says. Erin SutterA decades-old expert on healthy child feeding and parenting, he puts it more bluntly: “The belief is that if you hide vegetables in your child’s diet, they’ll live longer and stay slim.”
Secretly chop up some beets and make meatballs, Sneaking a bite of vegetable puree Sutter and other nutritionists say it’s not just pointless to stuff whipped cream-smothered treats into kids’ mouths; the approach could even be counterproductive. “The goal of child nutrition isn’t to get kids to eat everything they should eat today, but to help them learn to enjoy a variety of healthy foods throughout their lives,” Sutter told me. And here’s everything scientists know about how to achieve that, as opposed to mashing up vegetables beyond recognition and masking them with other flavors.
Experts say that if you consistently prepare meals with your child that contain a variety of foods, including vegetables they dislike, without forcing them to taste or swallow them, they will eventually eat most of what is offered to them. Sutter, who first outlined this approach in the 1980s, told me it works because it creates a bond of trust between parent and child. “Kids need to trust you and let you decide what you will or won’t eat from what you offer them,” she says. If your child notices that you’re hiding cauliflower in their potato chips or giving them small pieces of broccoli, Actually, green sprinklesIf they don’t, Sutter says, that trust can be broken and kids may become more wary of the foods their parents serve them or develop negative associations with vegetables.
Nearly 40 years after Dr. Sutter created his signature diet, pediatric nutritionists remain wary of the trust sneaking in of vegetables can erode. Yale public health professor Rafael Pérez Escamilla told me he would never recommend hiding vegetables among other foods, even if your child is in the midst of a mac and cheese obsession (as his son was for years in the ’90s). “Surround your child with healthy foods, but let them decide. Let them touch and smell food. Help them learn to eat when they’re hungry and stop when they know they’re full,” he said. “That’s easier said than done.”
While a hands-off approach is certainly less physically taxing, as Pérez Escamilla says, it can be a real emotional struggle. As a parent, I’m still tempted to add kale to my smoothies to soothe my anxiety, and I hesitate to repeatedly make creamed spinach for my toddler who just keeps rejecting it. But I’ve learned to find some solace in leading by example, rather than micromanaging.
Over the past few months, I’ve stopped mixing broccoli into pasta sauce and started serving it as part of dinner. My toddler sometimes eats a bite, sometimes she doesn’t. I’ve noticed that the less I show her I care, the more she tries things on her own.
