We've been having a real war in my house lately.  If you're a parent, you've probably been through the same skirmishes.  I'm speaking, of course, of the Great Battle of Eat Your Vegetables.

Broccoli is gross.  Cooked carrots are mushy. Raw carrots are icky.  Green beans are stinky.  I don't want a healthy supper; I want noodles.  It goes on and on.  What can you do?

Well, first of all, I take a look at the online USDA nutritional database to see if there's any hidden nutrition in the forbidden snack. Used in conjunction with Nutrition.gov, it's a good way to see not only what your kiddos are taking in, but compare it to what they should be getting.

And then comes the realization that a steady diet of noodles is not exactly a healthy one. And it's at that point that I turn to my fellow moms for inspiration, if only to prevent having to feed my kids cartoon character-shaped vitamins so that they don't develop scurvy.

Alix at Silicon Valley Moms Blog talks about an intriguing gadget called the Snacker Tracker, which I'm considering for my house based on her observations that the point-based system really spurred her kids into action. It's not the most high-tech of gadgets, but if it will increase veggie intake, I'm willing to give it a try.

But what if your kids don't want to compete for nutrition points, and coaxing or threats bounce right off them?  That's when you resort to smoke and mirrors.

Cafemama at the urbanMamas blog has some great ideas (as do her commenters) on hiding vegetables in food. I knew about zucchini bread, of course, but never once thought of carrot juice in pancakes, or grated vegetables in meatloaf. Brownies with spinach!? Not so sure about that one.

Asha at Parent Hacks says that sometimes a sprinkle of silly is all a recipe needs to appeal to picky kiddos. Now, not all of us are lucky enough to have a PB&J Mechanical Munchie Machine like the Wurtz family does, so other than wishing that Guru Brian would come over and sing to your spaghetti (like Asha's husband did), where does the sprinkle of silly come from? Asha and her commenters suggest diverse methods such as the "one for you, one for the dog" strategy, turning food like eggs and vegetables into different shapes, and renaming dishes to make them sound exotic and fun, among other things.

So it sounds like the main thing that's helped other parents is doing things that makes food more interesting to children. We know it works on grownups - have you seen the paragraph-long descriptions of menu items at restaurants? - so it stands to reason that it should work for kids, too. What do you do to make your kid's food appealing?

Posted by Dee | tagged: vegetables, Wurtz, food, kids