Place a piece of broccoli on your child’s plate. What happens? The dream is that they eat it but for many many parents that’s not their reality.
If that’s the same with most of the vegetables you put on your child’s plate, you might be tempted to hide vegetables in your children’s food but let’s look at what that might do.
Let’s start with the positive
If you hide veg in sauces, soups, curries, pancakes etc your child might eat more vegetables and get added fibre and vitamins and minerals into their diet which will benefit their health.
Your child might get used to some additional flavours and textures from you hiding the veg in the food which may help them try those vegetables outside of the food you have hidden them into.
But what about the negative
Hiding vegetables in food can make children unwilling to eat the familiar, ‘safe’ food you have added the vegetables to. This can further narrow their acceptance of food.
If we hide vegetables we often don’t serve them as separate vegetables too, so our children get exposed to those vegetables less. Exposure is SO important. The research suggests parents give up after 3-4 attempts whereas further research suggests on average children need to be exposed to the vegetable 10-15 times before they accept it.
The vegetable taste and sometimes even the texture is changed when you hide it in something else. So it doesn’t really help children get used to the vegetable taste.
When we hide vegetables in foods we often blend them. This breaks down the fibre and reduces the benefit of the fibre on our feelings of fullness. It also breaks down the cells so the sugars in the food are then counted as free sugars. These are the ones we are trying to limit. The NHS recommends that children aged 4 to 6 should have no more than 19g of free sugars a day, children aged 2 to 3 no more than 14g, and children aged 1 no more than 10g. There is no recommendation for under 1s except to avoid added sugar.
Hiding vegetables can increase the fear of what is in the food. Will I bite into my food and discover something I really don’t like. This can have negative consequences long term in terms of anxiety.
So what can we do instead
We can still add vegetables to foods but tell your child it is there. We play a game when we sit down to a meal about what is in our food. The older ones can get right down to the spice levels but the little ones can use their eyes to see first and then use their taste buds. It’s a helpful way to train the palette but also to get them to understand there is no hiding.
Reduce the blending. Try grating the vegetable into the food instead. Grated courgette into cheesy muffins, grated carrot into a cream cheese wrap, grated parsnip into a cottage pie.
Put the vegetable into the sauce but also have a piece on the side. This increases the exposure but also helps to signal to the child that there is a different vegetable in their food.
The bottom line
We want our children to be comfortable around food. We need to reduce the pressure at mealtimes. You get to choose what is on the plate, when it is served and where they eat. They get to choose if they eat and how much. Eating is so much more than the food going in the mouth and being swallowed. When I work 1-1 with clients we often use the 32 steps to eating process to support that journey.
To learn more about pressure, download the factsheet under the resources section. To get further support, please get in touch.