I Love Vegetables

“Broccoli tastes good, dear. And it also good for your body.”

I’m sure all of you, moms out there, have ever told this to your kids, right? You also try to explain about how vegetables help to maintain our health every day. But does it work? I don’t think so. Most of kids nowadays really hate vegetables and fruits.

And if so, do you push them to eat all the vegetables in their plates? Well, I do. But after I read a book written by Dr. Derrick Cutting, I think I need to reconsider the method I use about introducing this vegetable food for my daughter.

He said in his book that if we push our kids to eat vegetables, the only result we have is maybe we will find those vegetables hidden behind our refrigerator in the next month, because our kids choose to throw it away in the place that you can not see. So that when you see their plates are clean and consider that they have eaten all their vegetables, you won’t get mad. But the secret is that you don’t see that the vegetables were hidden in some places.

Pushing your kids to eat is always makes your problems getting bigger all the time.

I fact is we need to educate our kids about the value of food that have been served for them. They need to feel happy in their meal times.

There are methods that ask parents to use an extreme way to push kids about eating vegetables, by keep serving them all the time, even if they don’t touch it at all. So that when they finally get starving, they will eat those foods they hate because there’s nothing else to eat.

It’s like parents try to tell their children:

“This is your meal whether you like it or not. I don’t care if you hate vegetables. You will eat them anyway when you get hungry.”

The kids indeed will eat the meal but they can not enjoy the meal and that is not healthy.

Dr. Cutting suggests parents to pick other nice way to educate their children about the value of food. When you start to introduce a new kind of food, such as vegetables, start with a small amount first. And don’t forget to give this new food along with the kind of food that they already know before, so that the new taste will blend with the familiar one.

But when they reject that new food don’t be so angry with them. Tell them that maybe you should try to give that food again when they’re bigger. Then try to give that food again in the next few weeks. In the mean time, we can still find other different kind of food which has the same nutrition qualities.

If they hate broccoli, then try to introduce them another kind of vegetables. But we need to take a special attention about how are we going to serve that vegetable. Children who hate spinach can somehow like roasted carrot. Maybe they do not hate the vegetables. They just want them served in a certain way or maybe with a certain kind of seasoning.

I also have seen a mother who chooses to make puree of many different kind of vegetables, such as: carrots, broccoli, tomato, spinach, etc. Then she uses that purees in many kind of food for her kids. For example, she used spinach puree for her home making pizza or carrot puree for chicken nugget. And her kids love all of that food because they don’t even realize the vegetables tastes in the food they eat. I think this is a good way out for children who hate vegetables.

At last, why we don’t try to find a perfect recipe for vegetables so that our kids will enjoy their meal time and eat those vegetables with fun?