Posted on 10/11/2007 3:59:30 PM PDT by 68skylark
A WEEK’S worth of dinners for young Fiona Jacobson looks like this: Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. Noodles. French fries. Noodles. On the seventh day, the 5-year-old from Forest Hills, Queens, might indulge in a piece of pizza crust, with no sauce or cheese.
Over in New Jersey, the Bakers changed their November family vacation to accommodate Sasha, an 11-year-old so averse to fruits and vegetables that the smell of orange juice once made him faint. Instead of flying to Prague, Sasha’s parents decided to go to Barcelona, where they hope the food will be more to his liking.
And at the Useloff household, young Ethan’s tastes are so narrow that their home in Westfield, N.J., works something like a diner.
“I do the terrible mommy thing and make everyone separate dinners,” Jennifer Useloff said.
All three families share a common problem. Their children are not only picky eaters, prone to reject foods they once seemed to love, but they are also neophobic, which means they fear new food.
But for parents who worry that their children will never eat anything but chocolate milk, Gummi vitamins and the occasional grape, a new study offers some relief. Researchers examined the eating habits of 5,390 pairs of twins between 8 and 11 years old and found children’s aversions to trying new foods are mostly inherited.
The message to parents: It’s not your cooking, it’s your genes.
The study, led by Dr. Lucy Cooke of the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London, was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August. Dr. Cooke and others in the field believe it is the first to use a standard scale to investigate the contribution of genetics and environment to childhood neophobia.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
EXACTLY.
And my other rule, if you don’t like the way I cook, you cook, for everyone. Both of my kids LOVE to cook. To keep me out of the kitchen.
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LOL!
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I think many people’s aversion to spinach, and many other cooked vegetables, comes from them being overcooked. Spinach does have a strong flavour, and if overcooked it is just plain nasty, as are most green vegetables - it really just needs cooked enough to wilt it and get it hot. Top with a little butter and vinegar or lemon juice - yummy. Same for brussels sprouts - if overcooked they taste terrible, but cooked just enough to make them tender and they’re pretty good, but they’re not easy to get just right. Overcooked broccoli and cauliflower are pretty bad too, along with just about any other vegetable - if they’re mushy and the colour has gone dull they’re overcooked.
Just the thing that fostered my attitude that let my boys eat a PB&J sandwich (made by themselves) if they just could not stomach whatever I had prepared for dinner. And it wasn't how the food was prepared. I am a good cook. They just didn't like it. I defy any asshole parent who would force their children to eat something that was anethema to them to walk into Patsy's in New York and demand that a business man eat something that he hated.
That's what causes eating disorders (or worse).
BLTs made with garden tomatoes are one of the good things in life. My father’s homegrown tomatos have ruined me for most tomatoes you can find in the grocery store - even the vine ripened hothouse tomatoes are a distant second. They can be a pain to grow, though, and you usually either get none, or more than you can possibly use.
I think the only thing I would absolutely refuse to eat as a child was liver. I had my other preferences, like many kids, some of which my mom would cater to - raw carrots or turnips (easy to accomodate), no butter on sandwiches or under peanut butter - but generally I ate what was put in front of me. Like many people here the rule was that I had to at least try something a few times before I could refuse it, and that was a privelege to be used very rarely. I learned to like or at least tolerate most things. As an adult there’s still a few things I really don’t care for - liver, cooked turnip, squash or sweet potatoes. Otherwise I’m good with just about anything.
Oh, desserts? Just keep butterscotch away from me - never liked it and I never will. And I was never particularly fond of anything with raisins in it.
You are smarter than the average bear!
I would have loved raw carrots and broccoli with a PB&J.
I either went hungry or waited until they went to sleep and made a PPB&J.
No time for the veggies.
I should thank them as I now can go a week without food. I had my fantastic BBQ’ed pork ribs last Sunday and have not had anything close to a real meal this week. I did boil some water with a chicken bullion cube today. I am the only one at my Engineering firm that can turn in time with no lunch time claimed.
My parents taught me how to raise kids. Do the opposite of what they did.
I adopted four (4) siblings as an “only” parent in the last couple of years. My 7 year old new daughter (at the time) had only one thing listed on her medical chart, and that was “picky eater”. It was ridiculous that she had that label, as a medical problem. First day I brought them home with me and we ate our first meal as a family, she looked down at her plate (of delicious food I had worked hard to create), she says, “I don’t eat that, because I’m a picky eater.”
I looked down at her with all the love I could muster for my new, precious little girl, and said, “oh”, and then I proceed to ignore her. It was painful for both of us, as the rest of us went on to enjoy our food (other kids snuffed it down like it was their dying meal), and at the end of the meal, I got up to clear the table, taking her plate away (that she hadn’t touched one bite of). Through dramatic, heartful big tears rolling down her face, she says, “but I’m still hungry!”, to which I replied, “Well, the next time, I guess you’ll eat all your food then!”
It was the one and ONLY time she went to bed hungry in our home, and now, she will eat anything — including broccoli, peas, shrimp, salad — everything she bragged about before that she does NOT eat, as a “picky eater”.
It was a trick I learned from other foster / adoptive parents in my classes. I’ve had several other parents come and ask me to drop off their kids at my house for a meal, so they can watch how I “make” my kids eat the way they do. I tell them — “kids will eat if they’re hungry enough”.
I believe that catering (literally) to each child’s individual taste buds, when you have a large family (or in my case, as a single parent), teaches that child to feel entitled to much more than just food in their adulthood. THAT is child abuse. Just my humble opinion...
Yes, this is true. But I have found, since I moved to the suburbs from the town/country, oh so many years ago, that my tomato crop went to the rabbits and squirrels. I waged a fierce battle against them for many years, but since the city would not see fit to let me use the proper fire power to stop them, I decided to just stop planting.
many schools ban peanut butter because even a few pb molecules in the air could cause a severe allergic reaction in some kids
You don’t want to force kids to eat awful food but it is important to educate kids that they can not always expect to get exactly what they want in life and if they were to be hosted by someone, they should be able to always appreciate what they have.
Changing my vacation plans?
HA!
Our rules are at least a few bites, if not all, and knowing what my kids really don't like (I was averse to cooked carrots growing up, but loved brussel sprouts) I limit the amount I put on their plates when it is something they have tried several times and truly dislike. I'm not *that* mean!
Yeah, for the last few years. Not the last 6000 years previous to that.
I have been to countries where they eat bugs including roaches and I will not eat them. I have been hungry, but I did not eat them. I was hungry but not sick.
Cover a roach with anything that you dipped it into and eat it knowing that it is covered with disease and get back to me.
I understand that. My family, myself included, suffer from several allergies. And I do understand that some peanut allergies can be devastating. But a kid in my child's first class in public school had a peanut allergy, and I always made sure that when I brought treats, I had something that looked like the other kids treats, but didn't have peanuts. If the kid has a peanut allergy so intense that he cannot breathe around peanuts, I am sorry, but I am not responible for that. It is time for home schooling. At that point, it is not my fault.
Having two big hungry dogs eyeing their plates probably helped, too.
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