apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I don't know why anyone would criticize the idea of trying to make standard recipes more nutritious - this is something I always try to do - not just for my son's benefit but for all of us. Substitute some whole wheat flour for white. Add oatmeal to the waffles or pancakes. Stir in bananas to brownies. Sometimes my creations work out, sometimes they don't - but it's fun to experiment. I'm not doing this as a substitute for serving vegetables, just as a little extra. I don't think this book has a lot of new ideas, but not everyone feels comfortable messing with a recipe on their own - they need to follow a recipe word for word and not just look in the fridge and improvise. And for those folks, this book, and the many others like it, is probably helpful.

I'm really enjoying Melissa Summers' posts, and the comments on it here: http://workitmom.com/bloggers/orderingdisorder/

Elsewhere (I've forgotten where now) I'd read that the amounts of sneaky vegetables added, and considering the serving sizes, means that there really isn't much added nutritional benefit - so why bother? I guess I should go over to the other thread - because I want to know if there are any other parents who are thinking that they just don't need one more thing to add to the list of things to freak out about.

Oh - and my opinion? Just do our best without stressing. Stress is probably worse for us than anything. Our family doctor has said that with the way food has mutated over the years, even by eating only organic, locally grown stuff and/or everything in the world that's supposed to be right and good for you, and even doing so fanatically - you can't get all the vitamins and minerals and healthy business your body needs merely by eating food. You can't eat the quantity, or the quality. It just isn't there anymore. Nobody in our family is suffering, we're all fine, what I resent most about books like this and the publicity they get is that they increase insecurity, and create problems and then pretend to solve them.

(I apologize for the disjointed comments - I'm dashing them off in between cutting up stuff for soup!)

how 'bout the fact that she cribbed most of her recipes from another book/author?

I used to hide veggies in my child's food. He refused to eat anything that wasn't meat, rice or bread, so I had to be sneaky. It wasn't really an extra worry because the veggies were already there, cooked as part of the family meal, so it was just a matter of getting it into his stomach. Eventually, I just partially hid them, making sure to feed him the veggies at the beginning of the meal when he's hungry enough not to be fussy. Sometimes it's not the taste that kids object to. Sometimes it's the texture of the food, so if you change the way they're presented, they make actually be more palatable for the child.

Ha! You sure can tell who *doesn't* have kids in all those comments, hm? I love all the hard-and-fast absolute principles that so many people have, regardless of the child's age or temperament. I look forward to hearing how well these principles work applied to real live children of all ages.

I was an UBER-picky eater as a child, partly because I was very small and had a stomach the size of a lentil, and partly because most food tasted weird and strong to me. I survived, and not only did I grow out of it, now I love food and am actually a very experimental eater. And I have a great palate. :)

People get way too emotional about this subject, in my opinion. I fully agree with Maria Good. Why make mealtimes (and the time leading up to them) stressful? Sure, I do the sneaky mom thing sometimes. I add mashed steamed cauliflower to the homemade mac 'n' cheese. And I know (from Barbara Kingsolver's excellent book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) that if you grate and saute piles of zucchini, it practically disappears when you toss it with orzo and grated Parmesan. But most of the time my husband and I just cook good food that makes us happy, because we figure that seeing US enjoy our food is the best way to teach our kids to enjoy eating well.

And if our kids don't like what's on the table after tasting it, whatever. They get some toast or cereal. We always have different kinds of fruit and cheese after our meals, which everyone always loves, so we know they're getting SOME variety and nutrition. And of course there's always multivitamins.

I'm sorry if I sound snarky, but I just can't picture Jessica Seinfeld cooking every night. I smell a ghostwriter.

In my experience, kids will eat what they eat. We make what we like and offer it to them. If you don't make a big deal out of it they eat better. Turn it into a power struggle and you're really in for it.
I would agree with the first commenter that there could only really be a benefit to sneaking vitamin-rich ingredients in. However, I think that then you're really missing the point that when you do that (a) you're adding negligible amounts of vitamins and (b) the child is missing the opportunity to taste/learn to appreciate different kinds of food.

This from a grown child who ate spaghetti-o's, kraft dinner, pizza, and carrots for her first so many years. My oldest will eat anything (she's a 4 1/2 year old sushi master!) my youngest (2) tends toward pickiness but still eats what we offer. Usually.

I agree with phillymama.

Don't we all try to make substitutions in an effort to make dishes healthier? What is so wrong with adding pureed vegetables to a dish that your child already likes? How can adding a nutrition boost be negative? Of course it is better and necessary to attempt to feed our children whole fruits and vegetables, but sometimes they just refuse to eat. This past weekend, we added pureed butternut squash to homemade mac & cheese (with decent results). My daughter loved it and at the same meal, she happily ate a bowl of green beans.