Kids Dish

When I originally wrote about the idea of sneaking vegetables into your kids’ foods to boost the vitamin content I hadn’t yet read the book Deceptively Delicious. Honestly, I still haven’t read it, but I’m not yet in a position where I think it would be helpful. I still put extra veggies in foods that allow for it and eat a few vegetable based vegetarian meals a week. Sam is still in a pro-vegetable stage where he’ll cry for broccoli and beg for frozen peas so I don’t really think it’s necessary to slip avocado into a brownie when he’ll probably just want to eat a cracker anyway. I’m sure that someday he may go through a stage where he refuses to eat vegetables on principal and then perhaps I’ll feel the need to slip some kale into a smoothie, but until that day I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing- eating well, enjoying vegetables and encouraging my family to do the same.

In October I wrote

But when it comes down to it, how much vitamin content remains when you steam and puree vegetables then cook them all over again? When spread across six servings of macaroni and cheese how much of the nutrients from the squash remain?

The Houston Chronicle wrote about sneaking vegetables into kids in a piece called Attack of the stealth desserts. Their experts don’t seem to think you’re really getting that much of the good stuff into your kids when you slip some beets into your cake. The hidden vegetables, [Swanson- a Ph.D dietician] continued, do amp up the cakes’ nutritional profiles, offering doses of dietary fiber and vitamins A and C, “but you are kidding yourself if you think that’s a way to get your vegetable quota for the day.”

But the best part of the article was where they addressed the ethics of sneaking vegetables into treats. The ethicist they quoted for the article said,

Incidentally, Phillips has four children. They like vegetables.

Then they asked a 6-year-old what she thought about sneaking vegetables into desserts.

Isabella: (emphatically) Both!!

I feel like I’m the only person who hasn’t taken a look at Jessica Seinfeld’s best seller “Deceptively Delicious”. I really couldn’t be bothered. Mothers have been sneaking vegetables into their kids’ food since the beginning of time. Hell, I’ve been sneaking vegetables into my own food for years, so I certainly don’t need a celebrity cookbook to tell me how. In fact, the only celebrity cookbook I’d even bother with is Patti Labelle’s and that’s solely for her heavenly macaroni and cheese recipe.

The gossip of the day is that Mrs. Seinfeld’s book was plagiarized from another cookbook with the same idea. “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals,” published in April has similar recipes in addition to a similarly sneaky title about how to trick your kids. Since I haven’t read either book, I can’t really give an informed opinion, but I’ll go ahead and share my uninformed opinion anyway.

Honestly, I don’t think she intentionally ripped anyone off and I don’t think Jessica Seinfeld spends much of her day steaming and pureeing vegetables to sneak into her kids food. Most kids have the same favorite foods so the idea of pairing standard kid-approved recipes with like-colored vegetables isn’t going to have a whole lot of variation. Ms. Seinfeld most likely hired chefs who created the recipes for her based on the foods her children (and 90% of the children in this country) like to eat.

I have no objection to sticking vegetables in foods to boost the vitamin content. But when it comes down to it, how much vitamin content remains when you steam and puree vegetables then cook them all over again? When spread across six servings of macaroni and cheese how much of the nutrients from the squash remain? I never made Sam baby food. He just ate soft foods he could handle as he was ready for them. I can’t imagine going out of my way to make baby food now to disguise vegetables. Of course I’m lucky. So far Sam still likes vegetables. I’m not naive, so I know that may not last forever, but until then, I’ll skip the purees and stick with the old standbys- carrots in my meatloaf, applesauce instead of oil in my baked goods, and spinach in my tomato sauce.

Besides, from what I’ve read the recipes are pretty much horrible anyway. Check out Melissa Summers’ review of the sauce from the macaroni and cheese with squash puree recipe:

Even half this sauce would have been fine for my personal taste, the thickness of the sauce and the bizarre taste of the fat free cream cheese mixed with the squash made this almost intolerable to eat. I rarely say this because I love food and palate is not particularly able to discern subtle nuances in food. However this macaroni and cheese made me want to pull Jessica Seinfeld’s hair. Just a little bit.

Jamie Oliver’s school dinners campaign (which I wrote about here)isn’t going so well according to new reports. The number of students eating school meals has dropped drastically, as mothers sneak chips through the fence so their kids don’t go hungry eating freshly prepared vegetables.

Ofsted inspectors report a failure in marketing the campaign to kids and parents alike and a rise in prices that may be putting off some families. The quality of food in schools has improved across the board, especially in schools with on site kitchens. But dining halls are still rowdy and poorly designed and children eligible for free meals feel stigmatized, a sentiment that’s the same on both sides of the Atlantic. I often had students eat a bag of chips for lunch because they were too embarrassed to eat one of the “freebies.” Cashless swipe card systems can help with this.

The chief inspector of schools, Christine Gilbert, said: “Schools that had the most impact in encouraging healthy choices were those which gave a priority to this as part of their day-to-day work. They encourage pupil involvement in designing school menus, for example, and worked hard to make their families understand the importance of healthy schools.”

Some other problems the Ofsted Inspectors discuss in their report are that younger children in some of the schools don’t know how to use a knife and fork and had difficulty actually eating the meals. At a secondary school counselors had to be brought in because older girls with substance abuse problems were skipping meals to lose weight. Other kids complained that the portions were too small and they were still hungry.

I hope that schools take the report seriously and change their approach to school dinners. Involving parents and children alike in menu planning and giving families input about the program will help increase the numbers of students eating the meals.

Children’s minister Kevin Brennan said: “We are in this for the long-term. Cutting childhood obesity and unhealthy eating needs the backing of every local authority, school, teacher and parent in England.