We had a “three bites rule” growing up. If you forced down three bites and still didn’t like it, you could fix yourself something else. No three bites? No dessert. My parents never forced us to clean our plates, though, just admonished us to take less next time.
The only food this did not apply to was spaghetti. I have utterly despised spaghetti ever since I was old enough to eat it, and it is the one food where my parents completely gave up. By the time I was 6 or 7, they just gave me pizza on spaghetti nights. I’m 23 and I still won’t eat it. I also absolutely hate peanut butter, but my mom dislikes it even more than I do, so I never had to eat it.
I was a picky kid and I’ve gotten better as I’ve gotten older: I’ll try most anything once, except spaghetti or PBJs. My real hang-up is mushy or gooey textures. I like mashed potatoes, but that’s about it. No bananas, guacamole, Jell-O, scrambled eggs, etc. I can’t put milk in cereal and soggy bread makes me gag, so no doughy pizza or tomatoes on sandwiches.
I don’t disguise it. I tell them flat out. I cook mainly from scratch, and they watch me do it. Heck, at my oldest’s suggestion, I added a handful of spinach to the mac and cheese, and he says that one can’t even taste it, but it turns the mac and cheese a cool shade of green. I don’t see it as green, but he’s red-green colorblind, so who am I to argue. We go halfsies on mashed cauliflower and potatoes. Super yummy. There’s onions, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, zucchini, summer squash, and celery in spaghetti sauce, at a minimum.
The only vegetable that nobody seems to like is sweet potatoes. They turn their nose up every time. My older two even have preferences on how things are cooked. My younger boy doesn’t like his carrots steamed, but broil or grill them, and he’s all over it. The older doesn’t like acorn or butternut squash soup, but broil them with a bit of brown sugar and honey, and I have to limit him. Also, anything that calls for oil in baking, I substitute apple sauce for. It’s not that I am hiding things in their food, we’re just trying to eat healthily and get in at least 5 a day, and a wide variety of food experiences and some creative but yummy substitutions help with that. Letting them make suggestions and help with the cooking helps, too.
Sometimes I’ll do that just to get more nutritional bang for the buck. For example, if I’m making something that’s not terribly healthy, like pancakes, I might put in some bran or flax meal. Same for sweet breads - I’ll swap out some of the fat (oil or butter) for apple sauce and sometimes add in some shredded, mild vegetable.
But I don’t hide vegetables in things because my kids refuse to eat them. If my kids see me adding shredded veggies to a sweet bread, I’m not going to pretend it’s not happening. And we always have a side veggie and/or fruit that looks like what it is - I want them to know what they’re eating and what it tastes like.
MrWhatsit doctors up his meatloaf to the point that our kids think it’s supposed to be green. (From the chopped spinach.) But like others have said, it’s not a secret or a way of sneaking vegetables. It’s just the way he cooks.
I cook things my kid doesn’t like because his likes and dislikes are arbitrary and constantly changing. I do not keep a rotating list of acceptable-today foods and cook only from them. I would go nuts.
We have a dessert-is-available-for-people-who-eat-dinner rule, and some unpleasant dinners where we have to insist that his carbohydrate intake matches his insulin, but generally meals have at least one thing in that everyone likes. My kids are three and one, so they can’t makes sandwiches for themselves yet.
Aaarrrgh the bane of my current existence. My son in the space of a few weeks went from “try anything at least once” to not gonna do eat it. He eats what I serve or he goes hungry. I’m not fighting that battle. (he is so his mother’s son)
The 3 bite rule made me think of the times when my kids would surprise me by claiming to really like some unfamiliar food.
Because it smelled good and they helped cook it they were sure they were going to love it. First bite, they said yum i love this, the second bite is just as enthusiastic but it takes a lttle longer to swallow, by the third bite they’ve changed their mind and want to spit it out! kudos for trying anyway…
Oh definitely. Especially when you’re cooking for a large family, if you crossed everyone’s dislikes off the list we’d starve to death.
StaudtCJ, I grew up thinking I hated sweet potatoes. It turned out that my family only cooks them by ramping up the sugar. They were always candied or smothered in marshmallows. When I got older, I discovered that they’re a hell of a lot better with butter and salt, and now I’m addicted!
My kids like the butter and brown sugar version. I like the olive oil and salt version.
One “trick” in the food wars in trying things different ways and teaching your kids to think of different preparations as different foods - hence roasted sweet potatoes are different than candied ones. Raw broccoli is different than steamed broccoli in cheese sauce. Pickles are a completely different food than cucumbers. Beef roast, I know from my own childhood, is a completely different, and much grosser, food than hamburger or steak (it was the stringy texture), and I darn well know - even as a grown up - that if you fully cook an egg yolk and egg is edible - but if you don’t cook the egg yolk I can’t even look at it (which amuses my kids who then order their eggs sunny side up to watch mom blanch).
A co-worker of mine fixes Salmon Croquettes frequently. If her husband’s not home when she’s preparing them, she adds onion and peppers. If he’s home to hear the chopping, she leaves them out since he’s so sure that he doesn’t like onions and peppers.
