Taste Test
We called our first son “Two-Jar” since he would from the beginning gobble two whole jars of whatever baby food we put in front of him. I bought every kind of organic pureed vegetable I could get my hands on—peas, spinach, carrots, butternut and other squashes, green beans, brown rice with lentils, etc.—and to my wild, ecstatic delight, he ate it all up with no protest. (But also without a lot of apparent vigor.) He was more of the I-eat-to-fuel-my-body kind of person. “Let’s finish eating and GO GO GO.”
Second son has his own agenda. Born 2 weeks late, at over 11 lbs, he remains a large presence at the table. He refused anything pureed. And I don’t mean he just ate a little bit of it. I mean he never would eat it, period. I mashed up the sweetest pears ever grown on Earth for him and he gagged and spit the way you would if you had sand in your mouth. (Coincidentally, he would happily chew and swallow sand.) Finally one night at dinner when he was 8 months old, and I was deep into both panic and a high-calorie diet to support an extra-large, breast-milk-only baby, he took some lasagna from my plate and ate it. That set him off. He wanted solids--and solids that required work to eat--from the very beginning. Someone mentioned to me a book she had read with the point that there really is no pureed food in nature, so some babies simply wait for teeth, then start using them as our ancestors would have done. Hmmm. He did grow a full set of teeth early…
Now Mr. 2 Jar is approaching 5 and sometime back, he began to notice every slight striation of color and every 1-by-1 micron grain and fiber in his food. And the peer comments he heard at preschool snack time didn’t help his narrowing view. Time was, he’d happily peel and eat a boiled shrimp. And then he became someone who, when offered such, would likely imitate a “yucky!” response from dirty, rotten, other people’s children.
Then, at preschool, they did something brilliant. A taste test. They arranged a large variety of items for tasting and let the kids check one of three boxes: Liked it, Didn’t like it, Didn’t try it. Out of 15 items, the only three he didn’t like were raw garlic, chili powder, and lime (underscoring the pesky recurring idea that he can’t really be my child.) The only one he didn’t try was Red Hots candy (again, not mine). When I picked him up that day, Teacher told me that he was the only one who tried kumquats and he even stuck up for them when kid after kid claimed not to like them. I actually couldn’t have picked kumquats out of a food lineup, but I pay more attention to them now. So does Susan Russo, of Food Blogga fame, who wrote about her first kumquat experience for NPR. Her article includes great looking kumquat recipes. The Watercress and Endive Salad with Kumquats sounds amazing.
Anyway, the point is, A Taste Test. Try it at home. Include fun things the preschool did, like 72% cacao dark chocolate, raw sugar, rock salt, and pickles. You don’t have to bombard them with 15 of the most healthy veggies. The point is to get them interested in trying something that first time. That may just do the trick for a lifetime. At the very least, they could become people who don’t reach 40-odd years without knowing what a kumquat is.
--Sweet B
Bryan Irrera on September 15, 2008 at 08:29 AM
This sounds like a lot of fun even for grown ups. Would you please provide a list of what the 15 things were?
Sweet B on September 16, 2008 at 08:19 AM
Thanks Bryan! It does sound like fun, no? I'll give you the preschool's list, but they're not the 15 items I would have chosen. Perhaps they know better what will turn kids away on sight. Here they are: raw garlic, chili powder, cinnamon, sugar, rock salt, dill pickle, sweet pickle relish, lemon, lime, kumquat, Pixy Stix candy, Red Hots candy, baker's chocolate (yuck! my kid liked it..), 72% cacao dark chocolate, milk chocolate.