Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 13, 1990 TAG: 9006130216
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON OLDENBURG THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Not green peas fresh from the pod, but rather those muted gray-green pearls that acquire their own flavor and texture after time in a can. There was no logic to it; just this odd and insatiable hankering. My parents sat stunned during my next visit home until I had finished scraping the bottom of a bowl of reheated creamed peas.
"You eat peas now?" they asked, confused by a rush of memories of past skirmishes over untouched vegetables. Sure, they'd expected their boy to come home from college with God-knows-what vices. But eating peas?
"I can't explain it," I replied, also confused. Even now I can't explain it. But I think of this every time my 3-year-old son refuses to eat peas or almost any other vegetable. Probably So in a sense you have this emotionally charged situation at the table . . . The child finds out that if he doesn't eat, he gets a lot of attention. And if he eats, nobody says anything. What you must remember is that every child likes to make parents jump through a hoop. Gerda McCahan Furman University phsychologist to no parent's surprise, a survey cited in Tom and Nancy Biracree's "The Parents' Book of Facts" discloses that the average youngster, from birth to age 5, tolerates regularly only six of 29 standard vegetables (three cooked and three raw).
Scientists who have pondered childhood aversion to veggies have discovered that humans, for reasons of natural selection, inherit a taste for sweets and a dislike for bitterness. That makes some sense since many poisonous plants taste bitter. So, in part, avoiding bitter-tasting things accounts for the survival of the species. This should be remembered by frazzled parents who have had just about enough of little Johnny gagging over Brussels sprouts. This should never be told to anyone under 16.
There are also biological excuses that young vegetable refuseniks need not know. "First thing you have to remember is that that a 3- or 4-year-old has much more sensitive taste buds than you and I have," Gerda McCahan says of this kid-vegetable conundrum. "Children get into more of an adult diet at that age, and to them certain things just taste awful."
For McCahan, a Furman University psychologist who has counseled parents and tykes about mealtime malevolence, what tasted awful was okra - an unfortunate displeasure growing up in the heart of South Carolina where gumbo is a staple. It wasn't only the taste, confesses McCahan, but the slimy consistency of boiled okra that she abhors even today. "Like raw oysters," she gulps. "Parents ought to be a little bit more aware of the fact that taste in general is so much stronger for little children. That will start to disappear when they become 10 or 12."
Until then, spinach tends to brutalize young taste buds. Beets are like the bad trip of the produce aisle (too much flavor, neon color, mystifying texture). That cauliflower looks like someone's brain overshadows its relatively benign taste. Cucumbers are offensive until they're de-vegetablized into pickles. Tomatoes aren't too bad until parents get this crazy notion to stew them and top them with bread crumbs. No matter how often parents insist these foods are good, no empirical evidence supports the claim for a kid.
"But you have to be sure kids try everything when they're little, or otherwise they'll end up with strange eating patterns," says McCahan, who groans at the thought of one of her grandchildren whose dislike for vegetables drove him to eating only peanut butter and hamburgers.
I have vivid memories of nausea from the odor of asparagus steaming on the stove. I still wonder about the reasoning of one otherwise loving and well-meaning aunt who once tried to teach 6-year-old me to eat those mushy stalks by mashing them into my already mashed potatoes. It proved to be a mistake that I never forgot and that my aunt denied any memory of the rest of her life. And yet, three decades later, I am an aficionado of fresh asparagus.
Now I'm convinced it is the peas and asparagus that secretly urge me to become a parental ogre and force-feed my reluctant little son the vegetables I know to be good for him. And it is my dear sweet aunt's legacy that keeps me from doing it. Still, there must be a balance between physiologically good and psychologically sound when it comes to children and vegetables.
This issue is no small domestic squabble, even though the optimum portions are rather small. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Institute of Home Economics and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services's Children's Bureau recommend that a balanced diet for a 2- or 3-year-old toddler should include one 3-tablespoon serving daily of green-yellow fruits and vegetables and two 3-tablespoon servings of other vegetables, such as potatoes. Preschoolers a year or two older should get the same, only a little more of each.
The USDA decades ago even tried to make things easier than that. It contracted a nutritionist who later owned a historic inn in Charlottesville to come up with recipes for vegetable dishes that would appeal to school kids. Presumably, USDA would then issue these recipes to public school cafeteria cooks and the entire problem of getting youngsters to clean their Melmac during lunch period would disappear fast as you could say succotash.
Apparently, nothing much changed in the school lunchrooms between kids and spinach. Though, years later, the vegetable dishes at the inn in Charlottesville (particularly the baked creamed cucumbers) never went to waste.
Barbara Deskins scoffs at all the commotion mealtime causes in so many families. "It's unfortunate if parents and children get into battles over vegetables," says the University of Pittsburgh professor of clinical dietetics and nutrition. "Probably for most parents, there is no reason to really get hung up on this."
Her solution: "If you look at why nutritionists think children should eat vegetables, it's primarily for Vitamin C, Vitamin A, some of the trace minerals and fiber," she says. "You can get these same nutrients and vitamins from fruits . . . If a parent can get four small servings of fruits in their children each day, then technically the children don't have to eat vegetables."
If only it were so easy. But Gerda McCahan figures this to be a struggle that goes well beyond simple taste and nutrition - and not one to be resolved on a technicality. "The strange part of it is that this is something people really suffer over," she says. "Because of it, you feel unsuccessful in the parent role . . . Parents are supposed to be nurturant. Every mama who ever cooked and has the food rejected feels a little like a failure. Food is sort of love made tangible.
"So in a sense you have this emotionally charged situation at the table . . . The child finds out that if he doesn't eat, he gets a lot of attention. And if he eats, nobody says anything. What you must remember is that every child likes to make parents jump through a hoop."
McCahan's answer: Be reasonable. Be patient. Don't coerce. Don't bribe. Most important, don't feed them between meals. Her grown grandson who ate only peanut butter and hamburgers? "One day I asked him how did it happen that he finally got to eating like everyone else," she recalls. "He said he got good and hungry."
by CNB