Adventures in Healthy Eating

By Elena Marre, Founder, The Kids Table

Picky eating is more about power than food.  We desperately want our kids to eat their veggies, but too often our kids gravitate toward all things white and beige.  So we push, and they push back.  We find ourselves cajoling, bribing, and even threatening just to get those three little pieces of broccoli into their mouths.  Sometimes we win the battle, but these small victories jeopardize mealtime harmony and our sanity.  In the meantime, we’re waging a war that ultimately can’t be won.

If the goal is to instill a love of healthy foods in our children, we need to disengage from the day-to-day power struggle and take a longer-term approach.  We need to stop focusing on what is making it down the hatch at any given meal and start making healthy eating an adventure for our kids.

Engage Their Senses

The adventure begins with trying to see things through the wondrous eyes of your child.  Let her choose a fruit or vegetable that she has never tried before and make an event out of trying it together.  If it’s a kiwi, let her touch the fuzzy brown skin, feel the weight of the fruit in her hand, guess what it looks like on the inside, and then marvel at the star-shaped pattern of black seeds against the fibrous bright green background when you cut it open.

It was in this way that my 3-year-old son discovered his passion for pomegranates.  We picked one out and opened it together.  It was my first time eating one too, so my awe over the brilliant pinkish red seeds was completely sincere.  My son ate every single seed and loves them to this day — more than six years later.  I am sure the outcome would have been quite different had I just put a bowl of pomegranate seeds in front of him at snack time.  We both would have missed out on the fun.

Grow at Home

Whether your garden occupies a small window pot or most of the backyard, growing herbs, spinach, strawberries, and the like will help your child feel more connected to his food.  Nurturing a plant from a seed or seedling, watering it, and watching it grow will foster such a sense of pride in your child that he’ll likely be chomping at the bit for harvest time.

A bio-diesel pick-up truck with a garden built into the bed, Truck Farm Chicago travels throughout Chicagoland educating kids about where their food comes from.  I’ve had the pleasure of tacking on a cooking class to some of Truck Farm’s visits.  It’s amazing to see the kids crowded around the truck bed as Farmer Tim shows and lets them taste kale, Swiss chard, green onions, and purple basil.  The kids may nibble hesitantly at first on the pieces of raw and unfamiliar veggies.  By the end of the session, however, they are clamoring for more kale.

Cook in Good Company

With the proper tools and supervision, kids as young as 2 years old can meaningfully participate in the cooking process, mixing, rolling, measuring, chopping, tearing, and mashing.  Getting your child involved in the kitchen will give her ownership over her food, and she’ll be much more likely to enjoy (or at least taste) the fruits of her labor.  Being part of meal preparation also gives your child the chance to familiarize herself with the various ingredients and components of the meal, lessening the fear of the unknown.  I founded The Kids’ Table on these theories almost five years ago, and we see them validated time and time again in our cooking classes.  Parents are routinely amazed to see their kids wolfing down minty green pea soup, Swiss chard ricotta ravioli, or rainbow slaw.

Cooking with your child may not work every day and at every meal, because none of us have endless time, patience, and energy.  So start small, maybe with one weekend meal per week.  Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to involve your child in the kitchen.  As your child becomes more comfortable preparing meals, you may even find that you have yourself a productive kitchen helper.

Eat As a Family

The benefits of eating as a family are countless.  Among them is the opportunity to teach by example.  After all, monkey see, monkey do!  Serve meals family-style, allowing your child (with your help, if necessary) to fill his own plate.  Make sure to include at least one food that your child likes — and resist the urge to comment if that is the only food that passes his lips.  Your child will see you and the other members of the family enjoying a variety of foods.  If he doesn’t feel pressured, over time he will likely join in the fun.

My younger son Aleks’s love of tacos started years ago with our family burrito night.  I set out whole wheat tortillas, brown rice, black beans, diced avocado, grated cheese, and whatever other fixings I had lying around.  Jake, my older and much broader-palated son, and I would stuff our tortillas so full that we could barely close them.  At first, Aleks would just eat the tortilla.  He finally got adventurous and put brown rice, the only other beige food on the table, inside.  The real breakthrough came on a camping trip when he helped stir a veggie taco filling over a camping stove.  When he asked to taste it, I hid my shock and joy and acquiesced.  That night, he happily stuffed his tortilla like the rest of us.

As you incorporate some of these ideas, be patient with yourself and your child and remember to have fun.  Lasting change does not happen overnight, but it is well worth the wait.

About Elena Marre

Elena Marre is the founder of The Kids’ Table, a unique Chicago cooking school that transforms healthy cooking and eating into an adventure for all ages.  The Kids’ Table’s mission is to educate and empower tots, kids, teens, parents, and families to cook, eat, and love wholesome foods.  Classes and events combine hands-on experience, engaging instruction, and delicious recipes that allow kids and parents to take the culinary fun home.

We got the pics here and here!