“Kale was not a good idea.”
I’ve heard that tomato soup cake is delicious. The one time I made it, it sure wasn’t. Maybe I did something wrong.
I do like zucchini sweet-breads.
Definitely I agree that concealing “stealth veggies” in other foods with the aim of having the child not realize they’re there (not tricking the child into consuming something that they know they don’t want to eat: see below) should never be the first or the only approach to encouraging good child nutrition.
But if it works for some kids and parents who have found that other approaches to establishing healthy levels of childhood veggie-eating have been unsuccessful or inadequate, then I agree with needscoffee that it would be silly to refrain from trying the “stealth veggies” approach because of rigorous puritanical ideals about the One Right Way to Form Healthy Food Habits.
Except I don’t think anybody here is endorsing the idea of serving kids “crap” food as a regular thing in any case. Nobody is saying it’s a good strategy to feed your kid unhealthy foods as long as you sneak some healthier “stealth veggies” in them.
(And I’m also a bit dubious about possible correlation/causation entanglement in your description of outcomes. Yeah, the “picky” kids with no malnutrition problems had healthy foods offered without parental anxieties, great. Maybe some of the ones who did develop malnutrition problems originally had healthy foods offered without parental anxieties too, but in their case it didn’t work? Having a child suffering from self-inflicted malnutrition can make a parent kind of anxious!)
Again, though, no question that all parents should be modeling healthy and relaxed, nonjudgemental eating in their own behavior, as best they can.
I agree it’s not good to lie to kids, but there’s a difference between deliberately deceiving them about the presence of some food they actively dislike and avoid, and putting in some mushed-up ingredient that they might not like if you were serving it on its own.
It’s the difference between dishonestly affirming “No, there are no carrots in this soup” versus simply not mentioning everything that’s in the soup. Yes, if the child asks a specific question about ingredients, it should be answered honestly. (And yes, “stealth ingredients” should not be deliberately designed as a malicious “gotcha”, as in the case of your husband and the lobster, where the goal is to trick the child into eating an explicitly-refused food without realizing it. That’s just cruel.)
I get the sense that some kids have said, “ugh, carrots, i don’t want to eat that”.
But maybe it’s a more one-off kind of thing, “ugh, i don’t want to eat that dish”.
Also, thinking about this thread, i realize that I’m considering it from the perspective of myself as a child:
I have a much stronger sense of taste than most people, and it’s faded a lot. As a child, everything tasted much more vibrant and clear than, i think, is the experience of people who “hide an ingredient”. I didn’t like most strong condiments (like mustard) and there are a few flavors, like the flavor of cooked bell pepper, that i remain strongly averse to. I never was pressured to eat stuff. But when my mom made meatloaf, i only ate the accompanying vegetable, because the meatloaf tasted like pepper. And when she served spaghetti, i ate it with no sauce, just some grated cheese. I didn’t even know that there was pepper in the spaghetti sauce, i just knew it tasted nasty. To this day, i think of spaghetti as a disappointing and unsatisfying food, because that was my childhood experience of it.
So my expectation of the result of “hiding” a disliked food in a smoothie or stew is to teach the child that smoothies and stews are ALSO unpleasant.
Perhaps many childhood food aversions are actually based on things unrelated to flavor. Like okra is nasty because of the consistency, and mixed into soup it only adds a mildly unpleasant flavor, and a perfectly okay thickening of the soup.
But if you are trying to hide vegetables from you kid by mashing them up, consider that, just possibly, your kid doesn’t like the flavor, and you might actually be ruining that otherwise okay dish by slipping in some mashed carrots or pureed cauliflower.
Sorry for the hijack, but can I get more info on these small, freezable, lidded containers?
Were you actually re-using yogurt containers, and if so, what brand?
And on topic, I was snacking on homemade kale chips once at work, back when the concept of eating the garnish off the seafood display at the grocery store was still a novelty, and someone commented, “Oooh, how healthy!”
Me: “Not the way I make 'em.” (e.g. copious amounts of salt & olive oil.)
I have friends who reuse yogurt containers. I think many brands work. Personally, i adore the translucent plastic containers that fast food comes in. The ones that all share the same lid, but are different heights to contain a half cup, cup, pint, quart, or even 3 cups of food. I use them to freeze broth, stew, and anything else that’s wet. They are good for home made ice cream, too.
With my kids, we were somewhere between extremes, I think. Under normal circumstances (like, no illness, no special occasion), we’d serve whatever meal we were serving, and give kids a small but reasonable portion. They could choose to eat as much of it as they wanted, or to make themselves a different dinner (like a bowl of Cheerios). If they finished the main meal and were still hungry, they could have dessert; but if they chose Cheerios or not to eat the whole serving, no dessert. “Clean bowl club” was the rule.
They complained about it and tried to bargain, but as long as we kept to “clean bowl club,” they understood the boundaries. Sometimes they stuck with Cheerios, sometimes they finished a meal they didn’t particularly care for, sometimes they ate half the meal and were done. All good.
These days they’re pretty great eaters.
Doesn’t work for everyone, but that’s okay; it worked for us.
I couldn’t make that bargain, as we rarely served dessert. 
It’s just not something we usually eat. Dessert is for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Passover, and maybe when we invite friends over for dinner.
We’re all bakers, so we almost always have something tasty in the house, and we also like ice cream. Right now we have the bread I baked yesterday, and we just finished off the cupcakes from earlier in the week. It’s a rare weekend where one of us doesn’t make something.
Those are easy to find on Amazon if you feel so moved.
Oh, we have more than enough. We recently threw out a lot because our cupboard was stuffed. But i used to use purchased plastic storage containers. And I’ve stopped, because these are so much better. Easier to clean, easier to store, and i can always find the right lid.
I also like the flat rectangular plastic take out trays, with a black base and a clear lid that clicks into place. But they come in too many variants, and the lids aren’t interchangable. And they aren’t as sturdy, and sometimes actually break! I recently went through our collection and there our all the ones except the shape we had the most of.
Being in the upper Midwest, AE has lidded single-serving yogurt containers, and Noosa does too. Other small plastic containers work just fine, or you could use a Baggie.
We used ornamental kale as garnish when I was a banquet server, and I tasted it one time. It was NASTY. The kale that’s sold as chips, salad ingredients, etc. is not the same breed.
I have a NOOSA (vanilla) in my fridge, but it has the foil peel-off top, not an actual re-usable lid. 
Beeswax sheets instead of lids. Reusable
Over and over. Can buy a roll with perforated squares!
Oui yogurt is in glass.
Try asking your local farmers’ market for a small bag. Though that presumes that you’ve got a local farmers’ market; and also that they have spinach when you want it – around here, at least, it may only be available for a while in the spring; spinach hates hot weather and bolts to bitter seed before it gets any size.
I liked several things raw that I didn’t like, or couldn’t eat at all, if cooked. I could eat raw tomatoes, but tomato sauces were nauseating. Cooked carrots weren’t nauseating, but they were pretty yuck; raw carrots were fine. The frozen peas will have been blanched, but not cooked thoroughly.
It’s odd to me that kale tastes bitter to you and other brassicas don’t. But kale has better flavor (like many other brassicas) if harvested in cold weather and is more tender if harvested young (like many other vegetables). However, it’s probably a lot simpler for you to just eat other things than to try to find kale harvested young in cold weather! and it’s possible you still wouldn’t like it.
Spinach and peas are the two vegetables we get in big frozen bags, because we only use them as ingredients. My wife hates peas, but she likes the 1970s-style Moosewood samosas that I make sometimes, so that’s about the only time I use them. And frozen spinach is a great add-in to soups, and also I use it for the spinach-feta turnovers I sometimes make.
Weirdly, I really like kale, but don’t care for spinach except as an ingredient. Kale has structural integrity and a deep, savory flavor that I think is great. Meanwhile, arugula tastes to me like someone found some roadkill and soaked it in kerosene.
Many people don’t like collard greens. I love them, slow-cooked with bacon and onion.
Creamed spinach is delicious. We grow some kale and always have a huge crop. Sauteed with zucchini, peppers, whatever else, cannellini beans, etc. Can then serve that over pasta.
I don’t understand eating spinach cooked… Raw spinach is great!
Canned spinach is an abomination unto Nuggan.
Oh, and collard greens > kale.
To be more on topic, growing up vegetables were mostly potatoes, corn, iceberg lettuce, and raw carrots. I turned out… Mostly fine.
To the original question: It’s not sneaking if the child doesn’t ask what’s in the food or hasn’t expressed a desire to never eat some ingredient in any form. If they ask and you lie to them it is sneaking. If they’ve stated they never want to eat that ingredient and you don’t tell them it’s in the food it is sneaking. I think the answer is very simple, don’t lie to your children. People may agree that it is necessary to lie to children in some circumstances, but eating vegetables isn’t one of them. I recall telling my kids something like “taste it first and then I’ll tell you what’s in it”, so negotiation is acceptable and I recommend it.