Love of Vegetables Starts Extremely Early IMHO

MikePfirrman

I keep seeing in the media and on morning talk shows (and everywhere quite frankly) parenting tips of how to "sneak vegetables" into your kids diet.

My kids LOVE vegetables. My honest belief is that it's because my wife. Certainly not me. We both watched our kids when they were very young. We worked on alternating days and I even had to feed the kids at times. Hardest thing for parents is to get a kid to eat the green stuff or the squash for baby food. When I'd try it, it would be like a green explosion hit the room.

My wife, on the other hand, would talk, grab green spit coming out of their mouths, scoop it up and ram it back in their little mouths. I honestly think that's why my kids love vegetables so much.

If you wait until they are 6 or 7 to try to get them to acquire a taste, it's too late IMHO. Anyone can feed a toddler applesauce or bananas. It takes a Ninja parent to get them to eat vegetables. I'm very grateful my wife did it and made me do it as well. Lazy Dad would have done the bananas and applesauce every day if I had my choice.

Is it me or is it too late after year 3 or 4 to start kids on vegetables?

33gail33

MikePfirrman wrote: »

I keep seeing in the media and on morning talk shows (and everywhere quite frankly) parenting tips of how to "sneak vegetables" into your kids diet.

My kids LOVE vegetables. My honest belief is that it's because my wife. Certainly not me. We both watched our kids when they were very young. We worked on alternating days and I even had to feed the kids at times. Hardest thing for parents is to get a kid to eat the green stuff or the squash for baby food. When I'd try it, it would be like a green explosion hit the room.

My wife, on the other hand, would talk, grab green spit coming out of their mouths, scoop it up and ram it back in their little mouths. I honestly think that's why my kids love vegetables so much.

If you wait until they are 6 or 7 to try to get them to acquire a taste, it's too late IMHO. Anyone can feed a toddler applesauce or bananas. It takes a Ninja parent to get them to eat vegetables. I'm very grateful my wife did it and made me do it as well. Lazy Dad would have done the bananas and applesauce every day if I had my choice.

Is it me or is it too late after year 3 or 4 to start kids on vegetables?

Idk my kids always ate and liked vegetables, even pureed as baby food, they actually especially liked the squash and peas. You always hear about how kids think broccoli is horrible but my kids have always liked it. I think maybe because it was a normal thing included with every meal, even if I made a quick meal of spagetti or something we always ate a veggie (like steamed broccoli or peas) on the side.

It was meat I had a hard time getting them to eat as babies. My youngest chose to become vegetarian at age 7 - the older two learned to like meat when they got older.

But yeah usual advice is to start them on pureed veggies before fruit so they don't develop a taste for sweetness and then reject the veggies - or it was back in the day when I had my kids anyway. Now they skip the puree and go straight to finger foods I believe.

corinasue1143

I started liking vegetables when I learned to cook them. One of my kids always liked veggies. The other one still thinks vegetables is potatoes.

mtaratoot

When I was a wee lad, I totally didn't understand why people thought cooked spinach was yuck. I found it delicious! Never had an issue with broccoli or cauliflower. Perhaps the cheese sauce that sometimes was on it helped. Stuffed cabbage? No thanks. Yellow squash? Zucchini? Bring it on! String beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas? Yep. Tomatoes? Oddly I didn't like 'em. I still only eat them for about a month when they are home grown.

I'll have to ask if my mom remembers what she fed me as a toddler.

I do know that when we had vegetables, they were not overcooked. I think that might have something to do with it. We had vegetables that were cooked but not so much they were mush. Boiled vegetables? No thank you. Lightly steamed? Oh yeah!

We also had artichokes on a routine basis. Back then it was a way to eat more butter and garlic; today I hardly use any if I use any at all. Seven or eight months until my first artichokes are ripe....

MikePfirrman

mtaratoot wrote: »

When I was a wee lad, I totally didn't understand why people thought cooked spinach was yuck. I found it delicious! Never had an issue with broccoli or cauliflower. Perhaps the cheese sauce that sometimes was on it helped. Stuffed cabbage? No thanks. Yellow squash? Zucchini? Bring it on! String beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas? Yep. Tomatoes? Oddly I didn't like 'em. I still only eat them for about a month when they are home grown.

I'll have to ask if my mom remembers what she fed me as a toddler.

I do know that when we had vegetables, they were not overcooked. I think that might have something to do with it. We had vegetables that were cooked but not so much they were mush. Boiled vegetables? No thank you. Lightly steamed? Oh yeah!

We also had artichokes on a routine basis. Back then it was a way to eat more butter and garlic; today I hardly use any if I use any at all. Seven or eight months until my first artichokes are ripe....

I remember that we had vegetables with every meal. We had six kids (I was the youngest). Honestly, you ate your entire plate because that's all you were getting for the evening. We never went hungry, but it wasn't like a ton of food either, so you ate it or you did leave a bigger portion of your plate.

But my Dad was heavy and was a guy that liked sauces over all his vegetables. It wasn't until I learned to really cook well that I found out there were so many other vegetables I had never tried and so many ways to cook them.

For instance, both my wife and I grew up only thinking green beans were made with ham and potatoes. When you're a kid, it was pretty good. But our favorite way now to make green beans is with mushrooms, tons of garlic and red pepper in Olive Oil. Amazing. I'll also make lightly cooked Asian Green Beans as well w/ Oyster sauce, garlic and Tamari.

I honestly think, though, not having a choice when you're young has so much to do with the general like or dislike of vegetables.

goldenxbeauty

I hated vegetables as a kid. So did my daughter. As an adult, I like most of them and my daughter(8 yrs) is starting to as well.

cwolfman13

IDK. When my boys were babies we made a lot of our own baby food and they loved their vegetables...then they didn't. They eat plenty of fruit and often request fruit of some kind for their snack...given the nutrition they get from the fruit they eat and their calorie requirements I'm fine with that as they are both very active in general and also play competitive sports. Carrots are pretty much the only vegetable they will really eat relatively reliably so long as they have ranch to dip into.

I definitely wasn't big on veggies when I was a kid. I didn't really grow into that until my late teen years and early 20s. I remember reading an article awhile back talking about a biological opposition to vegetables in children. I don't remember all of the details, but it did mention a biological and evolutional opposition to vegetables due to being more drawn to foods with a higher energy concentration (like my boys and their fruits) as well as the bitterness of green vegetables in particular being more pronounced in kids as a safeguard due to the bitterness being a natural warning sign of toxicity and poison. Interestingly enough, the compounds in those vegetables that cause the bitterness are indeed toxic in high doses...but obviously not concentrated enough in our vegetables to harm us.

nooshi713

I remember not liking certain veggies as a kid but my parents made me eat them. I had to eat what they ate and that was that. I always smh when people say their kids won’t eat something. They are kids. What they eat is up to their parents. I understand giving them some choice and introducing things gradually over time. I get that. BUT, if your kid eats no veggies it is because you don’t make them eat them.

I love all veggies now and learned to like them as a kid because my parents made me eat them.

goal06082021

I'm also in the "didn't like vegetables until I learned to cook" camp, because growing up just about every vegetable we had came out of a can. I didn't really experience vegetables prepared in an appetizing way until I was doing the preparing myself. I also had a lot of Texture Issues as a child, most of which I've gotten over, and lots of vegetables have a lot of things going on texturally that can easily overwhelm a little kid with sensory difficulties.

I didn't like bitter flavors as a kid, either - wolfman might be onto something with that. I like bitter things now as an adult, which includes vegetables as well as, you know, things like coffee and scotch, which little kids probably shouldn't be consuming, LMAO.

MikePfirrman

nooshi713 wrote: »

I remember not liking certain veggies as a kid but my parents made me eat them. I had to eat what they ate and that was that. I always smh when people say their kids won’t eat something. They are kids. What they eat is up to their parents. I understand giving them some choice and introducing things gradually over time. I get that. BUT, if your kid eats no veggies it is because you don’t make them eat them.

I love all veggies now and learned to like them as a kid because my parents made me eat them.

One thing I can honestly say I grew into was Brussel Sprouts. Hated them as a kid. Couldn't stand them. But that's really the only veggie I can think of that, as a kid, I didn't like. Again, maybe that's the bitter thing that @cwolfman13 is referring to and they are really bitter if not made right.

I love them roasted now with olive oil and sea salt. Also love them nearly charred with balsamic glaze. I believe how you cook them makes all the difference.

AnnPT77

I liked most vegetables as a kid. To me, it seemed like what was most meaningful was that both parents liked vegetables (modeled eating veggies), had some individual preferences or dislikes but didn't demonize any veggies or make a big deal over their own preferences/dislikes. I was expected to *try* any food, but just a few bites was fine. If I didn't like it, no big drama. (It might be tried again later once or twice, but again no drama, no force.)

I didn't like lima beans, didn't like the canned zucchini in tomato sauce that my parents ate for a while (slimy nastiness!); I wasn't required to eat them. I liked pretty much everything else, even some supposedly challenging things: Spinach, asparagus, squash, etc.

Some of the people I know as adults who don't like particular veggies went through Big Drama as kids, like being forced to sit at the table until bedtime unless they ate the required serving of squash. I think that's not helpful.

My late husband learned to like some things during our lives together that he had rejected previously, vehemently so as a kid. Not overcooking them was part of that, but I also think part of it was me saying "fine, don't eat it; but I'm going to keep making/eating it because it's yummy - feel free to eat something else you want to make for yourself".

girlwithcurls2

I grew up in a part of the US where access to fresh veggies was good. My mom was a decent cook, and with seven kids, you ate what she cooked. As a young mom with very little financial resources, I made my own baby food, so my kids grew up eating different tasting vegetables every time they got them (carrots cooked a variety of ways, then pureed, for example). They ate most of what I gave them. If they were really opposed, I'd tell them that their taste buds might grow up later. It's funny how their tastes changed over time. One of them even said one day, "Mama! My tastebuds like grapefruit now!"

My husband grew up in a different part of the country, eating veggies from a can mostly. It took him a while to get used to the different ways I cooked them, but again, due to finances, he'd rather eat them than toss them. Now they all love veggies and we cherish what we get that's homegrown

mtaratoot

MikePfirrman wrote: »

nooshi713 wrote: »

I remember not liking certain veggies as a kid but my parents made me eat them. I had to eat what they ate and that was that. I always smh when people say their kids won’t eat something. They are kids. What they eat is up to their parents. I understand giving them some choice and introducing things gradually over time. I get that. BUT, if your kid eats no veggies it is because you don’t make them eat them.

I love all veggies now and learned to like them as a kid because my parents made me eat them.

One thing I can honestly say I grew into was Brussel Sprouts. Hated them as a kid. Couldn't stand them. But that's really the only veggie I can think of that, as a kid, I didn't like. Again, maybe that's the bitter thing that @cwolfman13 is referring to and they are really bitter if not made right.

I love them roasted now with olive oil and sea salt. Also love them nearly charred with balsamic glaze. I believe how you cook them makes all the difference.

I don't think we used to get the same quality Brussels sprouts as we do now. Back then they were bitter and I'll use the word "stinky" because I can't think of a better word. Probably been in storage a long time before they were at the grocery. Possibly similar flavors that made me dislike cabbage rolls. The Brussels sprouts we get today are often fresh and crispy. I like to roast them for sure. I bet a bagel if I boiled some for an hour I'd hate them.

Funny story you don't need to bother reading:

I used to be the primary cook when I lived with a certain woman for nine years back in the 1990s. Neither of us ate meat at the time. I found a recipe for stuffed cabbage rolls in one of Mollie Katzen's cookbooks. I think that's where it was from. Could have been Laurel's Kitchen. I don't remember obviously. That stuffed cabbage took a lot of work to prepare. I didn't like them AT ALL. My ex said she liked them. Well, not too much later, I made them again. Why? Because she liked them, and I sure liked her. Well after I made them the second time she admitted that she actually didn't like them either. I wish she would have just told me the first time.... My vegetarian Shepherd's pie (based on another Katzen recipe but altered quite a bit) she did love. My tzatziki? Good stuff. Potato/onion/carrot kugel? The bomb. Spaghetti pancake? Damn fine. Just not those cabbage rolls. I still won't eat 'em.

ythannah

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I liked most vegetables as a kid. To me, it seemed like what was most meaningful was that both parents liked vegetables (modeled eating veggies), had some individual preferences or dislikes but didn't demonize any veggies or make a big deal over their own preferences/dislikes. I was expected to *try* any food, but just a few bites was fine. If I didn't like it, no big drama. (It might be tried again later once or twice, but again no drama, no force.)

Same here, although there was a bit more emphasis on eating one's vegetables. My parents definitely modeled eating veg, and occasionally there were entire meals that consisted of only veg.

I definitely have issues with texture (can't do mushy or slimy or pasty) that persist to this day, and with bitterness to some extent. Lima beans have always been off the menu for me. Not a fan of asparagus, although I will gag it down to be polite, when I can't sling it over onto the SO's plate. On the other hand, brussels sprouts have always been my favourite, even as a very young child. Most other veg that are difficult to overcook have been happily eaten all my life. Some others like peas and zucchini I had to discover the raw version before I truly liked them because I wasn't partial to the texture of the cooked version.

I had WAY more issues with eating meat than I ever had with vegetables and eventually eliminated it completely.

MikePfirrman

I was curious and tried to do some research on early exposure. From what I can tell, it's variable. Some kids learn to like as they eat, others simply won't ever try and the last eat their entire plate regardless. So people's different experiences do make more sense.

Seems like from what I read, modeling by parents, without harassing, is the way to go.

Another article said kids require 8 to 10 times tasting something before they acquire a taste for it and seemed to also hint that masking food or hiding it in other things wasn't all bad because of this fact.

Speakeasy76

I do agree with you that exposing children to vegetables early and often WITHOUT PRESSURE is a good way to get children to like vegetables from a young age. However, I disagree with you on a couple of points.

One is that once kids reach a certain age, it's impossible to get kids to eat vegetables. That's just not true. I've known several people, kids and adults even, who have learned to like vegetables they previously though they hated. Also, many kids often go through a phase from about 18 months to 5 or 6 when they become pickier, rejecting foods they used to eat without problems and/or becoming fearful of trying new things. There's actually a term for it: food neophobia. Once they get past that stage (which is around age 6), they will actually probably be more willing to try new foods. You are also correct that for the AVERAGE kid it can take 8 to 10 exposures to a new food in order to add it in to their repertoire, but can be up to 20 for kids with sensory differences.

That bring me to the next point. There are infants and toddlers who go beyond the typical picky eater, and it's not for lack of parents trying. It can be due to difficulties in chewing and swallowing food and/or sensory processing differences/disorder, autism spectrum, and learned behavior from a past negative experience with food. It almost never begins as an actual behavioral feeding problem. When a child had these kind of difficulties it can be extremely stressful for parents, and a lot of times they just want their child to eat SOMETHING, let alone vegetables. It's very easy for people who have never experienced this to say something like "if a child gets hungry enough they will eat it." However, kids with these types of feeding disorders will literally starve before eating something outside of their comfort zone.

ETA:. My own kids are pretty good vegetable eaters, although my kids will eat some veggies raw and roasted but not cooked in stuff. I have never not given them to them, but even now they just don't eat them or luck around them. Oh well.

Malimalai

It's sad that parents don't give vegetables to young children for any reasons. Even when I was constipated a lot then, I still didn't get vegetables.😖 Mum said she was clueless about raising children and she preferred to be working than looking after us anyway.😞 I remember egg and rice to these days. We should be given vegetables as they are so cheap too. I was the one cooking family meals from an early age. I like to cook and eat vegetables a lot. I'm healthy because of it.

wunderkindking

I think most of what I gained from not having a choice was a problem not clearing my plate even if I was stuffed to the gills, so there's that.

I always liked raw vegetables. My mom preparing them via boiling them gray did not make me like them cooked, ever.

wunderkindking

Also produce is NOOOOOOOT cheap. I can buy 1 sweet potato or 2lbs of white rice for a dollar. The rice is a lot more food.

MikePfirrman

@Speakeasy76 -- I'm certainly no authority. It's more of a thing of curiosity than anything. I hear the terms like "vegephobe" and "sneaking vegetables into food" so often and it's just sad that we've gotten to that as a society.

I think one thing we all agree on is that vegetables, for the most part, are a very healthy and important part of anyone's diet.

I understand what you're saying on the autism spectrum and sensory issues and I'm sure that's an issue and stressful for parents. Though there are more and more studies coming out that indicate that the microbiome directly impacts autism. And the microbiome can be improved through diet and behaviors. I think how much is the question and how much can those improvements improve life.

And the ones that never eat certain things and then like them in adulthood -- well, that's me. I don't believe that kids have to be exposed to every single vegetable to like them. One article I read briefly about a study said if kids aren't exposed to peppers by age 7, they likely won't ever like them. Not sure if that's true or not. Other than stuffed green peppers, I can't remember ever eating peppers as a kid and I love them now.

My parents were super basic when it came to veggies -- corn, peas and carrots, broccoli and cauliflower (drenched in cheese), green beans with ham and potatoes. Brussel Sprouts in sauce. Cabbage made with pork. And the stuffed Green Peppers. That is all I can remember as a kid. And yet I love any vegetable now.

ythannah

I can guarantee I never had kohlrabi as a kid and I love it as an adult so I'm not sure early exposure has much importance.