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Top Chef Talks Picky Eaters
Filed under: Celeb Parents
I'm raising one adventurous eater, a six-year-old who will try just about anything and likes a large enough variety of food that I'm comfortable she's getting good nutrition. And then there's her little sister, who can go an entire week surviving on chocolate milk and frozen waffles. Last week at the grocery store, I finally broke down and begged. "Please," I said to my three-year-old, "Please tell me something you'll eat."
"Treats," she said. "And maybe broccoli soup."
Picky eaters plague their parents with worry, even celebrity parents like Top Chef's Tom Colicchio. Dad to a 14-year-old son who once preferred boxed macaroni, he knows parents have to work hard to build a love of nutritious foods. "For him, he'll eat peas, but he doesn't like broccoli," Colicchio said of his son. "Green was always an issue. For a while he wouldn't eat anything with chopped parsley. He still doesn't eat raw tomatoes, it's the gook inside."
If you're a parent, you're probably nodding your head right now. The gook inside the tomatoes is a big one with kids. Colicchio's advice for parents is this: Skip the processed products, cook with fresh ingredients and teach kids what good food tastes like. "Giving him a choice between something that is unhealthy and something healthy, that's not the choice," said Colicchio. "It's between good and bad, well prepared and poorly prepared."
Take, for example, the lowly chicken nugget. Kids love 'em. Pete Solomita, chef/owner of the Little Buddy Biscuit Company told Cooking With Kids that instead of heading to McD's, why not make them at home? Try whole-grain flour or bread crumbs for the coating, and bake them instead of deep frying them. "The reality is you have to feed your kids and so you have to feed them stuff that they'll eat," explained Solomita.
Last night, I made a delicious, buttery broccoli soup that three out of four family members agreed was worth a second helping. But there was my three-year-old, eating her boxed macaroni and cheese. I think Mr. Colicchio has the right idea. It's just going to take a little while to convince my daughter he's right.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
2-20-2009 @ 11:35AM
starflyer said...Last night I made some curry that my almost 3 year old said she would not eat. At first, she said she wouldn't eat any of it and that she wanted something else. Then she relented to plain rice. Instead, I dished her rice and put some of the curry potatoes on the rice. I told her she didn't have to eat them, but I knew that she had liked curry potatoes before. At the table, she ate the rice and asked for something else to eat. I told her I would not make her anything else, and she would have to eat more dinner. I gave her more rice. She finished her rice early, so she sat there for at least an extra 15 minutes while I ate and fed the baby. In the end, there were only a few small pieces of potatoes left. She ate almost everything.
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2-20-2009 @ 1:36PM
Karen said...I must say that kids are not fooled by home-made nuggets -- they want McDonald's because it's McDonald's, not because the food is good. Trying to get them to accept your fake nuggets by coating them in whole wheat and baking them seems like a losing strategy. Why not just grill (or bake) some chicken breast? Or, wild idea -- give them yogurt, which has plenty of protein, plus calcium and a pleasing taste. I was a very picky eater as a kid, and nothing my parents did to try to sneak in some hated foods worked. If your kid hates tomatoes, give him a carrot!
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3-17-2009 @ 12:56PM
Chef Pete Solomita said...Not everything works for all kids all of the time, so yes sometimes replacing something your kids like with a healthy version might not work. My son has never been to McD's, so I was really comparing homemade with the healthfood store version of chicken nuggets. The first time I did it it he complained but he now likes my own version, as well as plain roasted chicken (he's a leg man). I use organic chicken, whole wheat flour and corn meal for extra flavor and crunch. Yogurt is another topic. Smoothies yes, plain yogurt no.
2-23-2009 @ 7:11AM
Don said...I find the easiest way to keep junk away from not only my son but away from my wife and I, is to not buy the junk at the store.
If it isn't in the house we can't eat it, the hard part is to resist the temptation while at the grocery store. One way we found that helps us is to make sure that we eat before we hit the store, were a lot less likely to make additional purchases.
Another way is to make a meal plan for the week.
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