picky eaters

Starter Salads: Teaching My Kids to Love Greens

by Sally on November 18, 2011

When I first started dating my husband, he didn’t eat anything green, except granny smith apples. (When he reads this, he will indignantly declare, “Also parsley!” but the rest of us know that does not count.)

So I started making him salads in tiny bowls: just a few leaves with a whole bunch of croutons and a good smothering of vinaigrette dressing.

Fourteen years later, he eats green salads almost every night of the week–and he actually orders them in restaurants even when I’m not there. I consider this one of my finest accomplishments.

Those tiny starter salads are not unlike the ones I give to Henry and Sam. Henry happily eats it up. Sam, as always, is my wild card: Sometime he nibbles on a few plain leaves or asks for his favorite raspberry dressing, other times he doesn’t touch it at all.

That’s okay. The point is that they’re seeing salad at dinner. They’re learning that greens aren’t yucky. They’re learning to eat different kinds of foods mixed together, and that’s a big deal for kids.

While I like my salads loaded, my kids (and husband) still go pretty basic: mixed greens either plain or topped with raw veggies like peppers or shredded carrots. Henry is also a big fan of Caesar salad.

If you’re looking for ideas for your children, check out 8 Salads That Will Get Your Kids Hooked over at Raise Healthy Eaters.

Do your kids eat salad? If so, do you have any tips or recipes to share?

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My Picky Eater Recovery

by Sally on May 25, 2011

There’s a story that’s gone down in family history that ends with my mother pouring a glass of chocolate milk over my head. If you know my mother, you are likely lifting your jaw off the floor because she is the kindest, gentlest woman you ever will meet. But every mom has her breaking point, and I had pushed mine to hers.

I was an extremely picky eater as a child. As in, I existed on buttered noodles, fruit, and the occasional Steak-umm or Chicken Rondelet for years. And on this fabled night, I had requested a variety of foods for dinner only to refuse every single one of them once they were prepared. My final request: chocolate milk, which I also rejected. The rest, as they say, is family history.

As an adult, I’ve tried very hard to conquer my finicky ways, with a lot of success. I now love fish and asparagus. I’ve progressed to lukewarm on beans. I’m inching my way towards liking tomatoes. Eating these once-hated foods as an adult has been eye-opening (onions actually do taste good!) and empowering (I can attend any dinner party without fear). Being a mom has motivated me even more to broaden my horizons.

I currently teach an Introduction to Nutrition class and have incorporated the theme of picky eating recovery into my course. Using Jenna Pepper’s great blog, Food With Kid Appeal, we talk about the “mindset model”–of how just thinking about a food in a different way can change your perception of it. So instead of thinking “Tomatoes are so slimy and squishy and I hate them”, I now think “They’re such a beautiful color and so nutritious, and sundried tomatoes in pasta are really yummy”.

In class, I ask each student to take a Picky Eater Pledge: to choose a previously-hated food, try it in different ways over the course of a month, and then write about it.

My own choice this quarter: Brussels sprouts. I tried them steamed and suffered through just one mushy, grayish-green bite. But then I discovered this Brussels Sprouts Salad, and I seriously can’t get enough.

If you want to sign Jenna Pepper’s Picky Eater Pledge, go here.

And if you’ve successfully rediscovered a food you once hated as a child, tell me about it!

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Dinner Drama Part 4: Dinner Games (& Other Crazy Tricks That Actually Work!)

April 22, 2011

My mother-in-law has a game she plays with the grandkids when they won’t eat their dinner. “Don’t you eat that broccoli!” she’ll warn in a voice that somehow straddles stern and silly. “Don’t you eat it!” First, the kids giggle hilariously. Then they eat the broccoli. Frankly, I used to think it was all sort [...]

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Dinner Drama Part 3: Snack Sabotage!

April 14, 2011

Pre-dinner snacks are tricky territory. Especially for toddlers. Feed them too much and you’ll ruin their appetite for dinner. Feed them too little and risk a meltdown that could ruin dinner for the entire family. When I told food sociologist Dr. Dina Rose about Sam’s dinner boycott, one of the first things she asked about [...]

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Dinner Drama Part 2: Ground Rules

April 5, 2011

With my toddler, Sam, eating little to no dinner for months now, I thought it was time to get a second opinion. I also figured Dr. Dina Rose, a “food sociologist” with a fabulous blog called It’s Not About Nutrition, had probably heard it all by now. First, I asked for feedback on my dinnertime [...]

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Dinner Drama Part 1: Unfinished Business

March 31, 2011

Oh, dinner. I vaguely remember an event that occurred around 7:30 every evening and involved eating at a leisurely pace and my husband and I speaking to each other and actually hearing all the words. I’m not sure what happened to that meal. Lately, many of our dinners devolve into an exercise in frustration. The [...]

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This One Goes to Eleven

March 22, 2011

This is Sam. He has bright red hair and vivid blue eyes and is almost three. He loves singing, dancing, and performing dramatic interpretations of Ten Apples Up on Top. Mostly, he’s loud. He slept for much of his first three weeks of life, lulling us into a false sense of confidence that we could [...]

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What’s Your Feeding Strategy?

February 4, 2010

I was reading one of my go-to blogs, Raise Healthy Eaters, when I came across a post called “Why Every Parent Needs A Feeding Strategy”. I flew into a semi-panic. Did I have a feeding strategy?  I had a collection of household food policies and a whole bunch of opinions. But a feeding strategy sounded [...]

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Try, Try Again (and Again and Again…)

December 2, 2009

If you’ve read anything about picky eaters, you’ve read this: It can take up to twenty exposures to a new food before a child will try it—much less like it. But the unfortunate truth is that it may take even longer. And your child may never, ever like it. I don’t mean to be a [...]

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Photo Finish

November 18, 2009

One of my favorite blogs is Self magazine’s Eat Like Me. Cristin Dillon-Jones, a registered dietitian and working mom, posts a photo of everything she eats: meals, snacks, lattes in the car, everything. I love it because she eats real portions of real food—and makes the super-nutritious diet she eats seem both delicious and doable. And [...]

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