Hiding Veggies In Other Foods For Picky Eaters? Yes Or No?

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Hiding Veggies In Other Foods For Picky Eaters? Yes Or No?

Food For Thought

Sunday, October 02, 2011

by Janelle Sorensen, Chief Communications Officer, Healthy Child Healthy World

My youngest daughter tends to nibble and poke at her food, oftentimes leaving most of her meal uneaten. And, while overall she eats pretty healthy, I think she qualifies as a picky eater because there are so many foods she refuses to eat. Lucky for me, included on her short list of foods she likes are vegetables like broccoli, cucumber, carrots, and green beans. But, I know a lot of parents who struggle to get their kids to eat any vegetables at all - leading to a little supper subterfuge: hidden vegetables.

How do you hide a vegetable? You cook it, puree it, and secretly add it to other foods - like adding pureed carrots to pizza sauce or pureed spinach to brownies. Some parents think this method is genius and others think it only reinforces picky eating.

Here’s Chef Ann Cooper’s opinion (captured by our friends at Parent Earth):

Beth Bader, coauthor with Ali Benjamin of the acclaimed book, The Cleaner Plate Club, designed to help parents understand picky eating says “while stealth nutrition offers a short-term solution, it doesn’t help form long-term healthy eating habits. Avoid the puree approach, but still try chopping vegetables fine and adding them to pasta sauces, or incorporating them into a recipe such as shredded carrots in a turkey burger.” (You can read more of her tips at Dr.Greene.com.)

And, while it’s not a direct opinion regarding hiding vegetables, a recent article by Dr. Andrew Weil discusses adult picky eaters (an increasing cultural phenomenon) and how their eating behaviors may have been established as children. He theorizes that it’s largely an American issue because, as he says,

“nowhere else in the world is it so universally taken for granted that children should eat differently from adults. Our hypercommercialized society is the first -- and, I hope the last -- to create an entirely separate universe of child-specific foods and dishes. Most are overpriced, nutrient-poor assemblages of sugar, salt and fat, often garishly colored...It does kids no favors, and sets them up for a potential lifetime of poor health and social embarrassment, to excuse them from family meals of real food. Everyone benefits from healthy eating, but it is particularly crucial at the beginning of life. Providing your children with a variety of healthy foods -- and gently but persistently continuing to offer them exclusively during a child's "picky" phase -- are among a parent's most important obligations.”

What’s a frustrated parent to do? Here are some tips from Dr. Sears:

Plant a garden with your child. Let her help care for the plants, harvest the ripe vegetables, and wash and prepare them. She will probably be much more interested in eating what she has helped to grow.
Slip grated or diced vegetables into favorite foods. Try adding them to rice, cottage cheese, cream cheese, guacamole, or even macaroni and cheese. Zucchini pancakes are a big hit at our house, as are carrot muffins.
Camouflage vegetables with a favorite sauce.
Use vegetables as finger foods and dip them in a favorite sauce or dip.
Using a small cookie cutter, cut the vegetables into interesting shapes.
Steam your greens. They are much more flavorful and usually sweeter than when raw.
Make veggie art. Create colorful faces with olive- slice eyes, tomato ears, mushroom noses, bell-pepper mustaches, and any other playful features you can think of. Our eighth child, Lauren, loved to put olives on the tip of each finger. "Olive fingers" would then nibble this nutritious and nutrient-dense food off her fingertips. Zucchini pancakes make a terrific face to which you can add pea eyes, a carrot nose, and cheese hair.
Concoct creative camouflages. There are all kinds of possible variations on the old standby "cheese in the trees" (cheese melted on steamed broccoli florets). Or, you can all enjoy the pleasure of veggies topped with peanut- butter sauce, a specialty of Asian cuisines.

And, try, try, try again. According to Dr. Alan Greene, depending on age, it can take anywhere from six to 89 tries before a child will learn to love a food.

Patience, my friends. Patience...

How do you feel about hiding vegetables? Any other tricks for dealing with picky eaters you’d like to share?

Visit Eat Healthy for kid-friendly recipes and tips for making food fast, fun, frugal, and eco-friendly!

Photo courtesy unicefiran / CC BY 2.0

Posted by Cynthia on 10/26/2011 at 08:00 AM

This is what it has come to in our house!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTwq5KjdhUU

Posted by Rebekkah on 10/14/2011 at 12:45 PM

I am a dietitian and I have a 2 years old son who just refused to eat some veggies so what i do is make green drinks in the morning but I put lots of strawberries ( I buy organic berries and the summer and I freeze them myself) and add spinach, kale, broccoli and pineapple to give it a little sweetness and voila my son drinks 8oz of that everyday for breakfast and snack. He eats baked sweet potato, tomato and green beans. I also make his pasta sauce with lots of veggies and blend it and he eats it w/o any problem. So you just have to find out what works with your child. every child is different.

Posted by Kelly on 10/08/2011 at 11:32 AM

I believe that hiding veggies in other foods is a great idea but only if you are offering veggies in other ways too. My children (4 & 6) have veggies on their plates all the time, but I hid it too. My son loves topical green smoothies. They taste great. Frozen mango, frozen pineapple ,a banana, coconut water, and two big handfuls of spinach. If you teach them about healthy eating and why we eat that way then they will become healthy adults. It’s a daily conversation in our house.

Posted by Tanya Mack on 10/08/2011 at 07:50 AM

As a Mom, and as a friend of several other Moms, I know that it helps the food go down if the kiddos are involved in the cooking/preparing process. I am fortunate, I don’t have picky eaters. I think it’s because they were fed veggies and ‘health food’ from the very start.

I don’t see much wrong with hiding healthy foods, but I think it should have a limit. You shouldn’t have to stash veggeis in ‘junk’ foods for your teens. They should def. know better by then. =)

Posted by Courtney on 10/07/2011 at 01:01 PM

I think yes its a good idea as long as your are still trying to get them to eat veggies on their own as well. Who couldn’t use a few extra veggies stuck in here or there. I find that if I put all of the food on the table in serving bowls and let my girls serve themselves they are much more likely to eat healthy foods. They see mom and dad choosing the healthy foods. Plus them it gives them more control. It does make more dishes but it usually works well in our home.

Posted by Mark@ChildHealthcare on 10/05/2011 at 08:14 AM

Very interesting dilemma indeed!
I do not have kids but in my opinion the best way to deal with this issue is to not hide the veggies and try to educate kids about the importance of healthy diet from an early age. Surely Popeye is a good example :)

Posted by Samantha on 10/03/2011 at 05:47 PM

Before I became the mother of a picky eater, I was in the “don’t hide ‘em” camp. I reluctantly gave in. I’ve come up with a couple of tricks. I shred carrots to put in her pancakes in the morning or I throw in leftover sweet potato or squash, whatever we have in the fridge. She helps make them, so at least she knows what’s going in there. I do the same with meatballs and spaghetti sauce. Another trick I use is throwing everything on nachos. As long as a chip and cheese is involved, she’ll deal with a lot of other foods. She almost never eats the veggies I serve for dinner, but at least I know she’s eaten something besides noodles. Sometimes I think I’m going to too much work. It would be impossible to do this if I worked full-time.

Great article. I love how you described our children’s eating habits as a product of consumerism - so true.

Posted by Holly@homestyletips on 10/03/2011 at 06:10 AM

I’m not a mom, but I’m an older child in a big family. I think if you can’t get your children to eat veggies in a way that they know about it, hiding it is still a great idea.

I do think that planting a garden does help children to eat more vegetables as it turns it into something fun and interesting.

Posted by Laura on 10/01/2011 at 04:44 PM

Absolutely! Muffins make a great hiding place, as do smoothies!

Posted by HomeCookedHealthy on 10/01/2011 at 02:56 AM

I Vote YES with both hands please. When children are small they don’t understand that everything that tastes good isn’t good for them. camouflaging healthy food is a great way to get the nutrients they need. I also place the heatlhy food on the plate and have them try several bites. The more they try it the more they will eventually eat it. One of my favorites that is quick and easy (and my son LOVES it) is Green Orange Juice. He tells everyone about and I love how healthy it is for him. You can view this and other healthy tips and recipes at www.homecookedhealthy.com

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