In the UK it has often been reported that most of us eat too few vegetables. This is particularly true of those children who are brought up on junk food, with lots of sugar, salt and fat. Yet I have also often read that parents who want to give their kids fresh food struggle too. I have seen a few different strategies for tackling this. For example some friends of ours have a boy who is notorious for leaving his vegetables, yet if his Mum or Dad make a vegetable soup with everything blended he enjoys from the soupbowl those very vegetables he rejects on a normal plate.
Thinking of my own childhood, I recall being a fussy eater as a kid. We did not have fast food in those days other than the local 'chippy' - my parents only took us to a chippy when we were on holidays. I recall enjoying my Mum's roast beef, sausages, pork meatballs and fish - all proteins. I recall enjoying potatoes - we did not have pasta or rice in my family then. But vegetables were a different matter...and a bit of a struggle. I remember enjoying fresh or frozen peas, green beans and carrots. However, I recall not enjoying brussels sprouts, green cabbage and cauliflower. In the 1960s we were not given a choice about eating what was set in front of us and had to eat up what was on our plates; parents then were more willing to sit out such situations with their kids than in my generation. In those days I think that one problem was that some people - especially the elderly - cooked vegetables for far too long. The green cabbage would have a dark green hue, the cauliflower would be tinged with grey. I think that another factor is that children have a more sensitive sense of taste and texture and what tastes good for adults may taste too strong for children. However, I also remember the time my Mum introduced white cabbage to our roast dinners. Instead of the usual flacid, strong-tasting, green leaves we had crisper and milder white strips. I actually looked forward to eating the white cabbage as an integral part of the roast dinner instead of being something 'I had to eat'.
I am now in mid Atlantic on my way to Canada. My writing was interrupted by the mid Atlantic Air Canada economy class lunch which reminded me of another thing from my childhood - salads. My meal today came with a salad having a variety of green and red leaves and accompanied by a bottle of vinaigrette. There was something wrong with the bottle lid and it could not be opened. I complained to the stewardess but after a 10 minute wait I tried the dry leaves - yuck! Almost immediately I was supplied with a new bottle and the salad tasted fine. So back to my childhood, then nobody used dressings although the salads were well-washed (in my Mum's case in salt water) to avoid insects, but were not appetising. On our first holiday abroad (to German-speaking cantons of Switzerland) I found that I enjoyed the leaves much more with a simple oil and vinegar dressing. It is amazing what just 10 ml of dressing can do to some leaves!
Going to University in Glasgow was a step forward in developing my taste. Specifically I was exposed to a much bigger variety of things. The institutional food at my Hall of Residence was the 'worst of British' but we were right next to one of the main South Asian areas with restaurants that were just affordable for students. Then in 1976 we had a potato shortage. So many British families who had previously only used potatoes as a staple were forced into alternatives like rice and pasta; my parents included.
Another element was my fellow students from South East Asia - mainly Chinese - from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. From Chinese friends I realised that you did not have to boil vegetables to death - though to be fair my mother did not do that either - but that cooking could be very light indeed. A revelation for me was to observe how they prepared cauliflower: firstly quickly fry florets in a little oil then pour on boiling water from the kettle and simmer a few minutes. The result was mild and crip as opposed to the soft but pungent taste in food from elderly relatives. I also realised that I actually liked the mild crispness of raw cauliflower. In a different direction the Indian way of cooking vegetables made me realise that there were so many ways to prepare common vegetables and that it was worth adding herbs and spices.
I also realised that (back in the 1970s) the perception of white Britons of what constituted "healthy food" was based on the nutritional content but with little thought of what it tasted like. People were expected to eat disgusting food that passed for 'healthy' because of a few ticks in the nutritional checklist. I recall being served disgusting soup in my Hall of Residence with the server saying "it's good for you son" as if that compensated for the taste! If food tastes bad people will inevitably make poor choices and go for the unhealthy but tasty alternative.
So (after a long diversion...you can probably tell the flight is boring!) back to kids...we have wanted our children to eat healthy things and to enjoy their food. This involved developing their tastes. A surprising success, when our boys were under five, was raw vegetables. At weekends we wanted to unwind and some Saturdays or Sundays had a snack meal rather than a proper cooked mone. If we did that we did not just resort to crisps, nuts and fizzy drinks but offered quite a bit of raw vegetables. We usually did some combination of carrot sticks, cucumber slices, pepper slices and cauliflower florets. However to make it appetising we always did one or two dip sauces. We also felt it was unwise to be fanatical, e.g. to ban crisps, as we knew that our kids would eat them somewhere else if they were not getting them at home. However offering lots of raw veg also meant that they needed to eat the vegetables to avoid hunger. We found that the raw vegetables were always consumed with as much gusto as the crisps. Importantly, as teenagers now, they have not lost their taste for raw veg.
I think that the presentation of vegetables is not unimportant. I recall that when my grandmother served finely sliced carrots with butter and herbs it was more appetising than those from other relatives who plonked medium-sized whole carrots on the plate. The latter always seemed intimidating.
In our case a simple dip sauce probably helped to make the vegetables more interesting. We never measured but we would do roughly:
150 ml natural yogurt (ideally Greek)
50-70 ml mayonnaise
then something like either
a) a crushed clove of garlic, salt and pepper or
b) a dash of soya sauce and tsp paprika or
c) a teaspoon of curry powder or garam masala and a pinch of salt.
It's probably just our taste but we always were light on mayonnaise with our dips. Salad bars I have seen in the UK - along with many supermarket coleslaws - are very heavy in mayonnaise. For me it is adding needless calories and makes salads needlessly heavy-tasting.
So to sum up, it is well-worth trying to get kids to try fresh raw vegetables. Think though about presentation and how they can be appetising to a small guy's pallette.
