Younglings are sponges, absorbing & processing their environment. I would be interested in Hunter's exposure to popular culture such as TV, radio, computer, DVD, etc. Without the recommended daily dose of commercials Hunter may fail to be properly socialized as a consumer. All kidding aside, the preference for foods of convenience is learned behavior & can be unlearned. This is not to say that individuals don’t have different tastes. When fresh fruit or vegetables were offered at gatherings, parents were often surprised at the enthusiasm with which they were consumed.


http://www.amazon.com/Raise-Your-Eating-Gi…

“How to Raise your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children” by Lewis B. Frumkes

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Let's see, in about 20 years, Hunter can take over "Eat Arkansas". She'll have a well-trained palate by then!

Seriously, I see adults the age of my kids that will only eat burgers, chicken strips, fries and a limited variety of foods. The fast food society that we have become with so many activities after work and school leads parents to take the easy way out when it comes to meals. Children need to learn from a young age about a variety of foods and healthy eating. Burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, etc. and other convenience foods are a part of why our society has such an obesity problem!

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enjoy it now, but don't be surprised (or take it personally!) if she backslides when she gets a little older. toddlers are much more gastronomically adventurous than 4-5-6 year olds.

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I guess it's time for my Eat Arkansas confession...I was one of those kids who would have preferred Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to anything else. I ate green beans, and that was about it, as far as veggies were concerned.

As to why? Who knows...it could have been because I was raised by single parents (split, but both still around). Convenience foods were popular and for my Mom and Dad, they were an easy way to put dinner on the table. Veggies were canned, and almost everything came from a mix. I don't fault them at all...at least they were preparing an actual sit-down dinner instead of something through the drive thru. And as I said, no one saw much wrong with it at that point. Or....it might not have mattered. I might not have liked good for me stuff anyway. Probably a combination of both.

When I started getting older (high school/college), Red Lobster and Olive Garden were my favorite restaurants. I shudder to think of it now. Thankfully, I met a marvelous man (who became Mr. Mordy...or I should say, I because Mrs. Mordy), who hated chain restaurants and convenience foods. Now I can't imagine eating at most of the places I used to eat weekly. Veggies in our house are either fresh or frozen, and most likely local. I now have a huge appreciation for food from other cultures, where the most exotic I ate as a child was Italian and Tex-Mex. I recently attending an Indian wedding in Chicago, and ate everything in sight. Real Indian food (not the toned down version from Star of India) is such a magnificent experience.

So there's my confession...I'm a reformed foodie. I was able to change my palate through a lot of experimentation and forcing myself to eat some things I would have completely avoided before. The good news is that it's possible, but a know a lot of people who sadly will go through their lives eating frozen dinners and eating overprocessed, oversalted, fatty food at chain restaurants, and they will probably raise their children the same way.

Hopefully I'll be able to raise my kids with the proper appreciation of real food, but I can't guarantee they won't eat a box or two of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese at some point in their lives!

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hugh jr., age 7, is a very picky eater. Oh...we offer him all kinds of stuff all the time. My wife is a great cook and I'm not too terrible my own self. And we cook a lot. He likes cheese pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, most any chicken/beef/pork entree that we cook. He likes pasta, but not so much sauce; he'd prefer butter. He likes a PB&J or a ham or turkey sandwich. He loves rice. Vegetables? English peas or corn. Period. Nothing else from the veggie aisle, except avocados.

Eggs? Uh-uh. No way; no how. (I take that back...he loves french toast from the bread I bake, but that's the only form of eggs he'll eat.) He likes pancakes, oatmeal, cream o' wheat, and cold cereal.

We sometimes puree sweet potato or squash and mix it right in with the pancake batter and he's none the wiser. We got that trick from the cookbook Jerry Seinfeld's wife put out.

He likes fruit okay...grapes, melon, bananas, apples, peaches, plums.

How I envy you and your Hunter! I wish junior would eat like that. I was a scrawny kid and a picky eater, myself, so the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

If anyone has any great ideas, please pass them on!

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unfortunately Jennifer is right. My older son used to eat every single sweet pea that came out of our garden and after he got older, post-toddler age, he wouldn't touch any green vegetable with a ten-foot pole. He loved green beans as a baby too. I made my own baby food with sweet potatoes and green beans, etc.

they are exposed to so much when they start school - the benefits of Happy Meals over broccoli and baked chicken, pizza parties, hot dogs on the school menu -- even if you pack her lunch these things are still there. I dont know the answer to this one, but Jenniferb is right.

Hunter is adorable. Its a nice change to see a little girl dressed in feminine clothes.

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I simply have to disagree with the premise that children will choose healthy foods if they are simply offered or if parents set the example of eating healthy foods. There is often simply no rhyme or reason to what a child wants/doesn't want/likes/dislikes. My wife and I nearly obsess over eating healthy. Whole grains, fruits, fresh vegetables, lean meats. Five small meals a day. No sodas in our house of any kind. No sweets of any sort. Our child won't touch a vegetable with a ten foot pole, even if they're cleverly hidden in other foods.

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At 4 years of age Rosso, V will eat anything you put in front of him. Literally. Has no trouble. Mama is a health nut and it's working great. He started at the local public school this year and has fallen in love with the cafeteria food. Yesterday he had lemon chicken. I'm sorta kinda a food snob so I wonder what it looked like. Either way, he ate it. Currently his favorite meal treat is a whopping helping of "macho-nachos, Papa!"...

My 2 year old little girl is another story. But she drinks a lot of milk which helps. You have to be patient with her as she kind of picks at her plate. Her favorite current snack is a straigh up banana...

We obviously feel fortunate that our kids eat as well as they do...

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Okay, I'll slip this in although it barely qualifies as being on the subject. What on earth is the deal with Smucker's frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? How long does it take to make a fresh one?
Now the food quirks in this household over the years?
Like Tina's brood, there were fresh English peas straight from the garden vines, shelled and eaten right there on the row. That one was my fault, a carry over from my own childhood.
And one young'un wanted to eat only instant mashed potatoes. Straight up, mind you, not even salt and pepper added, much less gravy.
That same young'un, by the way, told me years after the fact that dog food doesn't taste half bad. Seems it was a handful for him and a handful for his tail wagging buddy.
In light of all this and more, maybe I should bring my eyebrows down out of my hairline when I see what constitutes grocery shopping for younger members of my family.

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Interesting discussion, Kat and respondents. One of the points I wanted to make in my exchange with you, Kat, is this: since I'm old, and grew up on both sides of a transition in our culture that substituted fast food for real food, I can remember the arrival of the original 'burger craze. I can remember, in fact, when the first McDonald's came to Little Rock.

And here's my recollection: because I had grown up eating wonderful, well-prepared homestyle Southern cooking, even when I was offered hamburgers as a child, I didn't want them. I'd take, in a heartbeat, what we called a farmer's dinner in summer--platters of fried okra, purple hull peas cooked with okra on top, smothered squash, fried corn, string beans and new potatoes, fresh sliced tomatoes and cantaloupe, cornbread. Not a bit of meat on the table, though a piece of fat pork may well have been tucked into the beans.

Hamburgers didn't hold a candle to that, not when we had bought the ingredients fresh that morning from the old farmers' market in North Little Rock, where real farmers trucked real local food right from the dirt to the market. Maybe by design or maybe because that's just how we preferred it, even when the 'burger craze arrived, we just weren't offered hamburgers very often.

They were a special-occasion food, a treat, not a meal--definitely not a substitution for a meal. When we had them, they were almost always grilled outside and eaten outside with other picnic foods.

What changed was, I think, the hype about hamburgers and other fast foods through the advertising industry. This inculcated in a whole generation of Americans the notion that a hamburger was a meal. It deliberately targeted younger folks.

And so we now have a whole generation of Americans raised with the notion that hamburgers constitute a real meal for their children--an argument I make on the thread to which you link, and so I won't repeat it here. And the consequences worry me, perhaps because I have recently been diagnosed with diabetes (a disease older members of my family almost predictably get around my current age), and don't want to see younger folks having to cope with this serious illness, simply because they have not eaten right from the time they were young.

As I said in the earlier thread, when I look at the cuisine we've substituted for fast food, and hamburgers, in particular, I can't escape the feeling we've sold a precious birthright for a mess of pottage. As Dr. David Katz notes at Huffington Post today, it's undeniable that a diet based largely around heavy consumption of meat--the hamburger diet many folks now feed their children out of convenience, or because it's cheaper, or because the children beg for it, is correlated with illness. Where our traditional vegetable-based diet, with its emphasis on eating what was local and fresh, was much more conducive to our health: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-m…

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As a kid, fast food was more expensive than what Mom cooked, especially in the summer when we got lots of things from Nana's garden. I've been told tales that I loved McDonald's, but I don't remember getting it often unless we were going to eat fish (which I don't like).
Most veggies I was OK with, but those I didn't like, I flat out didn't like...then. I recall a day in grad school when I wanted cauliflower. Not covered in cheese sauce, the only way I'd stomach it as a kid and it was still a fight then, but just lightly steamed cauliflower. I ate the whole head in 2 servings. Called Mom EY and told her that she needed to sit down, I had something to say. (Probably not the nicest thing for a young woman a state away to say to her parents.) When I told her that I'd eaten cauliflower, no cheese in sight, she was stunned. I now roast it and would eat it like that daily.
Mom always tried to be open minded about food, but Dad EY never has been. She insists that's where I get a lot of my food preferences from. That by hearing "I don't like X", I would think that was the cool thing to do. I might agree except that some of my favorite veggies are things he hates and vice versa.
I do try to eat more veggies, less fast food, less processed food. I do try to buy more ingredients and less product. Do I eat burgers? Yes, but prefer 1. off a grill (home or friend's) 2. AR Burger Co/CJ's/other local hand made place 3. 5 Guys 4. generic fast food. McD's fries just aren't like they used to be, but I do have them from time to time. Generally acknolwedge it's a waste of calories when I'm throwing the wrapper out.

Kat, my thought (worth what you paid for it) is that you're doing Hunter a great service by exposing her to so much. I'd guess her tastes will evolve like everyone else's do. She'll at least know about all the wonderful choices we are so lucky to have.

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What a great thread this is! I am so proud that Kat and Hunter are experiencing food adventure together. I have great memories of Mom trying new tastes and dishes on us as we grew up. I even still love liver!
Grav got a great shot at the birthday party, too.

I read Eat AR and TDT all the time, and am guilty of not posting my appreciation.

Thanks, Kat. You add a joy to our lives that we may not always verbalize

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(blush) aw, shucks.

Hunter and I shared one of her favorite meals at one of our favorite restaurants, Star of India, Saturday night. She really digs on the Vegetarian Delight, even more than on Chicken Tikka Korma. I think a lot of it has to do with the variety. She was very much into her Navratten Curry (multi-vegetable in curry sauce) and ate almost all of our Saag Paneer (stewed spinach with Indian cheese) and even dug a bit of the Dhal Makani (black lentils in sauce) but turned her nose up at kheer (milky rice pudding), which is usually her favorite. At first I thought this was weird, but then Paul pointed out that she had just seen the chocolate birthday cake that was being brought out.

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I know this is late BUT when my son was Hunter's age he ate anything.
anything.
Fresh from the garden broccoli and tomatoes...anything good and fresh so we were pretty lax in what we ate around him and what we would say "ok" to, because 9 times out of 10 he chose the "good" stuff.
Then at about 5ish he began to have food issues about color or texture (he also began to have issues about how clothes felt on him and seams and shoes) and went from a kid who would eat anything to one that want processed and bland.
Ugh, what a battle, some days i was just happy to get a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches in him.
And the battle really did not end until around 15ish.
Now at 18 he is starting to eat better (still no tomatoes...it is a texture issue, he won't eat spaghetti sauce if it has chunks of tomatoes and onions...ditto salsa.) and has a larger variety he will chose from.
But he would still rather have a good burger over a salad any day...though last night we made Spanakopita together.
There is no moral to this story, just a warning that things change as they get more independent.
and he still has issues with shoes and various clothing fabrics/textures.

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