They did a great radio show interviewing someone who wrote about this topic (sorry I can't remember her name!) She looked into it and found that vegetables are an acquired taste. If a woman eats a lot of veggies during pregnancy and when the baby begins to nurse, the child is more likely to accept small amounts of veggies when they start on eating food.
They also found by pureeing broccoli or other foods most kids seem to hate, and then hiding small amounts in kids' food, they acquire a taste to eat veggies with less resistance. It might sound sneaky to do it, but it sets the child up for wanting to eat better foods.
One personal rant: the stuff I see passed off as "kids meals" is crap. Why do restaurants serve us adults a balanced entree but a "kids meal" is a greasy hot dog and some processed mac-and-cheese? Frozen "kids" dinners are old processed bits of chicken meat, breaded & deep fried, with a side of brownie. Where I work my co-worker is able to bring in her 1 yr old infant; his lunch every day is fast-food burger or hotdog for lunch (no bun/vegetables, just greasy meat) and a jar of Gerber's processed something-or-other.
|