Why I stopped hiding veggies in my kids’ food...

I think it’s safe to say that a lot of us parents want to get as many veggies in our kids as possible.  The problem is that some kids just don’t want to eat that many veggies when there are so many other options.  When my kids were younger I would opt to “hide” the veggies in their food so they wouldn’t scowl and make a big stink about eating the veggies.  I would make blended veggie muffins, I would put diced veggies in pasta sauce, I would make blended soups loaded with veggies, I would put veggies in smoothies, and pretty much any other way I could sneak the veggies in to their food I did.  This worked great to ensure that the kids got the veggies in their little bodies. But after some time I realized my kids were getting the veggies in, but they weren’t able to identify the vegetables they were eating and weren’t getting their palates used to the taste and textures of all the vegetables I would serve.  My husband and I talked about it and we came to the conclusion that the ultimate goal was to teach the kids about different vegetables and we wanted to expose them to different veggies and different preparation of veggies so their palates would become accustomed to them. Sure it’s great to sneak extra veggies in their food, no harm there, but I started making an effort to serve just sides of straight veggies prepared in different ways.  I started out just steaming the veggies whole, then stir frying them with more flavor, and roasting them. At first this was met with a lot of protest, because of course the kids weren’t used to it and didn’t want it. But we basically made them try the dishes every single meal and over time they got used to it and started recognizing the different tastes and textures and developing preferences for what veggies they like. It’s hard to deal with the pushback that kids can give sometimes, for sure, but as parents we have to pick our battles and decide what we are willing to give in on and what is important enough for us to push through.