I was talking about something different. I was describing the culture of Italy. Although you might of course find a controlling parent here or there in Italy, there is no pressure commonly put on children to taste foods they don’t want to taste and no cultural value associated with trying a lot of different foods or acquiring a taste for them. Most adults in italy do not eat the foods of other regions of Italy on any regular basis, but only when they travel (rarely), and many would be quick to tell you that they have tasted the other foods and greatly prefer the foods of their own home region. I don’t disbelieve for one second the report that catholiver is giving of her family, but it really has nothing do with what I posted, nor would relating my family’s history. I am not Italian by birth or citizenship. I simply have lived here a fairly long time.
If you wanted to comment on what I added as my personal philosophy, that wasn’t clear at all from your response, which seemed to be solely arguing with the Italian custom of cooking a separate dish for a family member who didn’t like what the majority was eating that night. (It’s not just children who get that treatment).
I really think this article is off track. Saying it wastes too much money to throw away bruised vegetables and beans and rice, so it’s cheaper to just serve chicken nuggets, is ridiculous. I finish the vegetables off my kids’ plates all the time. No, they don’t clean their plates every night and all current parenting advice is not to make them. But that’s on you as the parent. You gave them too much or something unrealistic or failed to save or finish or repurpose it yourself. Those things are a lot of work though. And I really believe it’s more about the work than the per-serving cost.
I firmly believe the true culprit is the emotional and mental exhaustion of poverty. As someone with all parts of Heavysnaxx’s brilliant equation available to me, I’m still exhausted thinking about what to make for dinner, who’s going to eat which components, etc. And I have the luxury of a good, part time job and a supportive spouse with a full time job. No way would I even be considering dried beans, simmered for hours with an appealing but not-too-spicy sauce, and finely-minced onions with no visible chunks, if I’d worked 50 hours a week for minimum wage as a single parent.
You may be wise to never move back to the US. Unless someone tells me about an allergy or the like they eat what’s served or they don’t. To think that anyone here would fix one or six different meals seems completely ludicrous. Saying what may be the culture somewhere doesn’t mean it’s correct.
Heart & Soul, Jacques Pepin’s series, has an episode wherein he and his preteen granddaughter, Shorey, cook some of her favorites. The first dish contains escargot.
Seems like the family’s attitude toward eating works! When daughter Claudine was little, if she asked what was for dinner, his response was, “Food.”
That makes me laugh. MANY years ago when our daughters were maybe 8 and 10 we got snowed in at the family cabin. I had a small’ish chunk of ham and some noodles. And I had one apple. So I made a ham/noodle casserole and baked the apple. One of the girls asked “What is this?” I replied “Dinner. And what we have in the morning is going to be ‘breakfast.’”
I’ll also mention that our three grands who are four and 1-1/2 love Cambazola and red bell pepper sticks. Go figure. The fourth grand is only four months old
I happily eat everything my preschooler won’t touch. It never occurred to me to throw the ‘rejects’ away. And I am not doing this because I am poor/ not poor. It frees up the cooking decisions. I know what the kid eats for sure (and while its not everything, its a wide enough range for that age) so I usually manage to throw some of those in. I offer the kid the ‘new’ stuff and ask her to try it, and let her choose whether to eat it. It cuts down mealtime drama (and battling preschoolers sure is tiring) since there are enough healthy choices for her to nourish herself properly. I don’t have to force her to eat stuff. She is asked to try new stuff. And we all get to eat what we want/ choose to eat, all healthy options. And in the event she doesn’t want to eat what’s on the table, alternatives won’t be offered.
The only exception is when we eat spicy food where nothing on the table is anything she can handle (or likes), then we’ll get her some non spicy carb and maybe boil some peas for her.
There’s a theory that kids’ tastebuds are much more sensitive – especially ones detecting bitterness – than adults. I know that there’s lots of foods I loathed as a kid, like liver & onions, that I adore as an adult. And I wasn’t really a very picky kid, I just couldn’t understand how anyone could enjoy that stuff.
But my dad insisted that I try two of his favorite beverages as a kid, V8 and buttermilk, and I still can’t stand them.[quote=“ZwiebelHash, post:17, topic:3608”]
calamari, anyone?
[/quote]
My little sister was a huge fan of calamari until she saw a squid in an aquarium. Didn’t eat it until she was 30-something after that.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
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I have four nephews and nieces. Three were raised in America for several years where they appeared to eat a lot of “kids food” (no, I’m not actually sure what that is). I think I see something of the results - a liking for chain restaurants where they always eat the same thing. No sense of food adventure, I suppose.
The fourth was raised in Spain where, generally speaking, he ate the wide range of food that his parents ate (within the constraints of his young age). I think I see something of the results - a willingness to try new foods, even if he isnt at all sure that he’s going to like it. As he has said to his parents - “I don’t always enjoy everything when I have dinner with Uncle John, but it’s always interesting.”
Absolutely! And even in moderation, nothing I listed is bad. If that’s all the kids get, well, that’s unhealthy as well as monotonous.
When I have dinner with my sister and nephew, they often use chicken fingers or hot dogs as lures to eat vegetables. “Yes, you can have another piece of hot dog, but you need to eat your broccoli first.” Works almost every time.
However, I think a big key is not presenting food to kids as “this is your food, and this is what grownups eat”. If the adults are eating sushi, don’t just give the kid chicken fingers and assume he won’t want sushi because it’s “weird”. I’ve seen very happy 5-year-olds in sushi restaurants, hot pot places, and Chinese restaurants who haven’t been told that the stuff their parents are eating is too grownup for them.
My mother didn’t quite do that. But when she made tuna salad, she took a portion out for my father with no mayonnaise (he once had a bad experience with mayonnaise and wouldn’t touch it), and another for my grandmother with no celery (her dentures couldn’t handle it). She would also pick the lima beans out of my brother’s mixed vegetables.
But she certainly didn’t cook different meals for each of us.
