Child like?
HEALTH | Three cookbooks offer different recipes on getting kids to eat well
George was having a fine time with our little cooking exercise. He was eager to pour, eager to measure and especially eager to whisk.
But he was not eager to taste. "I don't like vegetables," George announced. His almost 4 1/2-year-old palate had seen the enemy, and it was green. Or maybe red, if you counted the pepper we had just added to the bowl.
(Harper Collins/AP)
Getting some kids to eat their five-a-day is more difficult than others, and begging, pleading, reasoning, bribes of ice cream and offers of cash all have proven ineffective. There are kids like mine, who likes her green beans even better with a splash of vinegar, and there are kids for whom bitter and texture are four-letter words, never to cross their lips.
Three cookbooks take three very different approaches to this issue of children and vegetables. All achieve the same result -- the ingestion of healthy nutrients -- but with varying degrees of involvement or deceit.
Perhaps the clearest example of "what they don't know can't hurt them" is Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious (HarperCollins, $24.95).
Here, vegetables are the light-and-sound guys of the production -- necessary, but never seen or appreciated. Fruits and veggies are pureed en masse to a consistency resembling baby food, then stored in pre-measured quantities in your freezer. Each recipe includes one or more of these purees in amounts just small enough that your kids will never see, smell or taste the existence of the powerhouse slipped inside.
The cookbook offers excellent nutritional profiles of the most common fruits and vegetables. Nutritionist Joy Bauer also has vetted every recipe; healthy highlights are sprinkled through the book along with comments from Jessica, her kids and other moms. (Comedian husband Jerry shares just a few thoughts.)
Enthusiastic justification for this approach seems to be missing just a few steps in its logic, however. The introduction states that "the best parenting solutions are the ones that build good habits -- invisibly." Yet if a child is in the habit of eating macaroni and cheese or muffins, it seems likely he or she will continue to do so into adulthood, even when Mom isn't slipping undetectable creamed vegetables inside. It's hard to make something a habit if you don't know you're doing it in the first place.
In the foreword by Dr. Roxana Mehran and Dr. Mehmet Oz, they say, "Later, as [your children] grow, they will want healthy vegetables on their own, since, for years, they had their chicken nuggets coated with them already!" Yet the idea here is to make these vegetables "as invisible as possible," Seinfeld says on Page 49. When later presented with the flavor and texture of naked beets or broccoli (part of the chicken nugget recipe as purees), will a child dig in or demand chicken nuggets?
Bauer offers this wisdom, too: "... it's important for kids to develop control and confidence when it comes to what they eat." Yet with this approach, your children will discover they had no idea what they were eating. Might they become suspicious rather than confident?
No one involved with Deceptively Delicious was willing to be interviewed for this story, but Bauer does go on to state in the book that "proper nutrition increases energy, prevents injury and enhances healing, improves academic performance, and even has a positive effect on moods." For the parent who has lost all hope that even a carrot might make an appearance at dinner, and academic performance or health is at stake, this might be a technique of last resort. Seinfeld says it brought peace to dinners with her three kids. And George did eat his couscous (see related story).
For children brought up on the plan espoused by chef Joachim Splichal and his wife, Christine, vegetables have an expected role. So do salmon, wild rice and lentils. And yet he says there's no drama in this dinner theater. His twin sons, now 12, will eat anything.
In the Splichals' Feeding Baby (Ten Speed Press, $14.95), even the first solid foods you prepare for your child are openly diverse. Couscous with soft-yet-visible cauliflower and carrots is served to babies 9-12 months. When they're a year old, children eat what their parents are eating, with a few modifications: grits and spinach with Cheddar, whitefish in mashed potatoes.
When children are 2, options expand to artichokes with extra virgin olive oil, white beans with parsley, and braised pork with apricots. The whole family eats the same. Notes at the beginning of the book offer advice about nutrition and cautions against choking hazards and allergies.
Chef Splichal, founder of the Patina Restaurant Group, decided when his kids were born in 1996 that he wanted to write a cookbook on healthy baby food. He and Christine prepared everything for their children from organic and farmers markets.
By age 3, the boys were eating razor clams and venison at dinner. "We really developed their taste buds very early," he says. "Every night as babies, a little protein and a variety of veggies."
When the boys were between 3 and 7, they traveled often with their parents to Europe, where they were willing to try delicacies such as sweetbreads and tongue. In fact, about the only thing Nicolas and Stephane have resisted are Brussels sprouts, Splichal says. "That hasn't gone over well."
As someone in the restaurant business, he's particularly pleased that his children are adventurous. "I think it's a lot of fun that you can take them anywhere, and they eat off the regular menu," he says. In fact, when they were younger, they'd keep notebooks about places they'd dined and their favorite things. "They can have a conversation about food," he says.
With this cookbook, no food is too sophisticated. "I think it's a really great tool to help children learn what they should eat," Splichal says. As they grow, their choices won't be limited to pasta and French fries, he says. "It's much healthier than all that."
A third cookbook makes your child the star of the show. The Spatulatta Cookbook (Scholastic, $16.99) is authored by Isabella Gerasole, 12, and her sister Olivia, 10, of Evanston. They first gained fame when their filmmaker neighbor helped them launch a cooking Web site for kids. Now they are a veritable franchise, but they're still learning techniques and foods.
The Gerasole girls were taught to cook by their Italian dad and have eaten a lot of pasta over the years. Olivia recalls making so many noodles that they ran out of chairs from which to hang them to dry and had to use the chandelier. That's changed a bit: "We're all just trying to eat a lot healthier now," Olivia says. "These days it's something grilled and something green," Isabella concurs.
They include lots of green things in their cookbook, along with very kid-friendly (or novice-adult-chef-friendly) tips. Beside the Weiner Weenie Dogs food-as-art recipe, they list green beans with garlic, curly Creole salad, root vegetable bake, and even tass kebab, chicken yakotori and tofu salad.
The girls are learning useful skills. "I'm now very good at sauteing," Isabella says. "I can use a knife."
But they also are learning to experiment. "I think because I was cooking, I got used to trying lots of new things," Olivia says. She is a bit more bold than her peers. "My friends definitely do not try spinach," Olivia says. She hesitated too at spanakopita (Greek spinach pie) at first, but discovered a new favorite.
And while Olivia's still not sold on tilapia, Isabella likes salmon. "Salmon makes you smart," she says. She admits she's not a fan of rapini-but she has at least tried it.
While we were chopping our red pepper, Dale, also 4 1/2, made that very point to George: "How do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it?" George may have been confident in his stance, but these cookbook options mean he might be persuaded to waver when he's reached the grand old age of 5.
Julianne Will is a local free-lance writer.