Did You Eat Your Vegetables?

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Poll Time!

There’s an article in the March 2008 Bon Appetit issue entitled, “Eat Your Broccoli!” that sums up what I think about the new vegetable fad of pureeing vegetables [which looked like multicolored vomit to me in Seinfeld's book] that children don’t want to eat and sneaking them into food they like:

“…if you feed children vegetables hidden in macaroni and cheese, they will grow up learning to eat macaroni and cheese but not vegetables. It teaches them nothing about the pleasure of vegetables, nor does it celebrate the beauty and magic of nature. It teaches them nothing except, perhaps, to be distrustful of food because cooks sneak things into it or be distrustful of parents because they are deceptive.“

I’m reminded of my own childhood, my erratic and picky eating, and my dodgy relationship with vegetables. I still remember the times when my mom tried to make me eat okra and I tried so hard not to gag. My family and our helpers also tried to feed me bitter gourd — a healthy, but unbelievably bitter wrinkly vegetable — with no success.

But wait! It wasn’t all whining. I had favorites that I fondly remember and still enjoy: vegetable chop suey, steamed and buttered snow peas with carrots, bottle gourd, mung bean soup, green beans, lima beans, Chinese cabbage, and a whole lot more. My parents, my grandparents, and our helpers tried their very best to feed me vegetables, Ms. Picky and Appetite-Challenged. I am grateful that they’ve made the effort and practiced utmost patience, without being sneaky or deceptive: “You’re gonna eat it and your gonna love it!” I wouldn’t be enjoying a wide variety of foods today if it wasn’t for them.

For parents who are having a hard time getting their children to eat their veggies, Mark Kurlansky suggests a few things:

• Introduce them to gardening. Children love to eat things they grow.
• Learn from the Chinese cooking’s balancing of all flavors. Bitterness is balanced by sweet or salty, which you can achieve by something like soy sauce.
• Some children have a genetic repulsion to bitterness. Try incorporating tubers, which are usually sweet, with bitter greens.
• Try more sauteing because it makes vegetables less bitter.

Again, I agree with all of these suggestions. I remember gardening both in school (it was part of the curriculum), at home and at my grandparents’ place. There is something so exciting about seeing vegetables grow and anticipating to benefit from the fruits of one’s labor. The balancing of flavors — that’s what I’m talking about when I mentioned the vegetable chop suey. It’s a medley of anything from cabbage, Chinese cabbage, carrots, green beans, peas, baby corn, bell peppers, to mushrooms, and it’s often flavored with pieces of cured meat, shrimps, squids, chicken, beef, pork, etc. Chop suey happens to have soy sauce in it and cooked by sauteing.

If you’ve noticed on this site, we don’t eat or cook vegetables on their own. We add some flavors from meat or mushrooms, or broth. We use soy sauce. We saute a lot. And we’re big on having visually appealing food. It takes a bit more effort but it changes the whole vegetable experience…the whole eating experience. Of course, it’s just the two of us and no one else to take care of, so I can’t say what it’s like to try feeding young hungry mouths who will refuse to eat anything but fries and ice cream.

That said, I’m not undermining the daily frustrations of parents when it comes to feeding their kids. I’m only speaking from my own experience as a child, coming from a background where vegetables play a big part in meals, including breakfast. Yes, I was forced to eat some vegetables when I was much younger and I thought I had the hardest life (silly, really but what kid doesn’t think they don’t have the haaaardest life?), but I knew my parents had good intentions…they just tasted quite bitter and slimey sometimes.