Before the day ends I wanted to post two interesting kid-and-f0od articles from this Sunday’s New York Times magazine.
The first is from the magazine’s regular column, “Cooking with Dexter.” I’ve been meaning for a long time to post about this column, written by Times Dining Editor Pete Wells, about the food-related adventures he shares with his now five-year-old son, Dexter. Although the column has been mocked (here and here, for example), I like Wells’s style, and it certainly falls right into the Lunch Tray’s all things kid-and-food rubric.
This week’s column is entitled “Dad’s Weird Suppers” and is about the meals that Wells makes for his children when their mother is off-duty, and his refusal to pander to their immature palates. In describing an eggplant dish that was spurned by his kids, he writes:
That a considerable percentage of my constituents opposed my eggplant program was not entirely a surprise. Previous polling data gathered after the failure of a sautéed-mushroom initiative suggested that voter sentiment against gray, slimy foods ran strong. No doubt, my numbers would have been higher if I had avoided the eggplant and gone with baked sweet potatoes, so popular with the electorate. But that would not be leadership, and I am a leader.
It’s a dilemma I’m sure many of us can relate to, and I’ve certainly been guilty of pandering to the little voters in my own district. [Thanks to Hilary for alerting me to this piece even before the Sunday paper hit my sidewalk.]
On a more serious note, the magazine also featured a fascinating article (“A Big, Fat Miracle“) about an epileptic child who suffered from more than a hundred seizures a day — until his parents put him on an extremely high-fat, l0w-carb diet. It was alarming to read that the child’s
breakfast eggs are mixed with heavy cream and served with bacon. A typical lunch is full-fat Greek yogurt mixed with coconut oil. Dinner is hot dogs, bacon, macadamia nuts and cheese. We figure that in an average week, Sam consumes a quart and a third of heavy cream, nearly a stick and a half of butter, 13 teaspoons of coconut oil, 20 slices of bacon and 9 eggs. Sam’s diet is just shy of 90 percent fat.
However, the regimen is apparently a recognized and accepted treatment for patients like this boy, who are resistant to drug therapies for the disorder, and his seizures are down to about six a day. But, as you’ll see if you read the whole article, administering this diet is far from easy.
Have you stumbled across any interesting kid-and-food news items you’d like to share? You can always leave a link in a comment or email me directly.
Dr. Susan Rubin says
The high fat epilepsy diet is nothing new. One of my mentors, Annemarie Colbin has been speaking about it for years. Of course it makes for a sensational NYT story given that our country continues to be severely fat phobic!
http://www.foodandhealing.com/articles/article-highfat.htm
bettina elias siegel says
In fairness to the NYT, though, the article did make clear that this diet has been around for a long, long time and only fell out of favor due to the introduction of drugs.
NotCinderell says
I’m okay with catering a little bit to my kids’ preferences, mainly because they’re never given the option of anything really appalling, so even their favorites are okay. Hamburgers on whole wheat buns with a side of mashed sweet potatoes? Sure! Baked pasta with homemade tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese? Why not? Mechanically-separated chicken patties and french fries from a freezer bag are never on the menu. With these things totally removed from the equation, saying yes to their favorites becomes easier.
Renee says
The dilemma of whether or not to cater has actually had a large impact on my cooking –my husband and I ate a lot of ethnic food before my daughter came along, but it just didn’t seem fair to serve a young child such extreme flavors. I tried a bit, but generally my cooking became a little more boring over the years. She’s older now, and she’s good about trying bites of foods she hasn’t had before (or even bites of food she has tried previously and didn’t like), but we still don’t eat a lot of Thai or Mexican as family meals. She just still doesn’t care for them.
Part of me wants to push her, but part of me remembers when my mom went through her Japanese cooking phase –I hated Japanese food then and I still hate it now 🙂
bettina elias siegel says
But remember, Renee, those flavors aren’t extreme to the kids who grow up in those cultures. I don’t have the answers to this one by any means, but I will say that my kids are super-adventurous in ethnic restaurants (and I’m talking everything from Mexican to Ethiopian to Bosnian to Malaysian) and that’s probably because my husband and I love to eat and just dragged them with us from an early age. (But, as noted in my About page, that doesn’t translate into no pickiness at home. As I said, I don’t have all the answers! 🙂 )
Renee says
That is very true. Of course, I had to tone down my flavors for my husband too –he likes the ethnic foods, but he doesn’t like them nearly as spicy as I do.
I suppose we all project our tastes onto our kids in some ways –for instance, I hate fish (which is why I hated all that Japanese food), so I just don’t cook fish. Other than the stray fish stick, I don’t think my daughter has ever had fish. But as much as I love Mexican, and as often as we force her to eat (not too spicy) Mexican food, she has yet to really like any of it. It’s a little hard to figure out what is projection, what is true likes/dislikes, and what is just a lack of exposure.
bettina elias siegel says
I know. Like I’m not a big fruit eater at breakfast, and lo and behold, my kids don’t eat much fruit at breakfast either (unless it’s in something, like a banana or blueberry pancake). Is that because I forget to serve it often enough due to my own likes and dislikes or do they take after me?
jenna Food w/ Kid Appeal says
if kids have the confidence that they’ll learn to like extreme flavors (or unfamiliar dishes) then they will over time grow to like them. if kids on the other hand are told by adults – “oh, you probably won’t like that because it’s spicy, fishy, coconutty, etc. ” they do a good job of following that lead.
being fair to the child is believing that they have their own tastes preferences and knowing that their palate will change over time.
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/menus/kids-taste-buds.htm
this article states that as people age they lose a % of their taste receptors. that means adults taste less of a flavor than kids. in addition to that some folks are born with more receptors than others, which means they experience more taste than others eating the same food. this may be why some kids have visceral reactions to bitter flavors (as found in some vege) as well as fattiness (some kids won’t eat icing as it uber sweet and fat).
when my kids try something that they don’t like, i respond with things like “you haven’t learned to like XYZ yet”, or
” maybe XYZ isn’t a 4yo food, I think mama was older than that when I learned to like it,” or
“why don’t you pick out the XYZ bites and try the other parts?”
this way they know the door isn’t closed to liking mushrooms or olives or spicy food. they know that they are capable of exploring different foods, assessing them for taste, and coming back for another sample next time.
i like a balance of appeasing kids’ tastes and providing opportunities to expand their palate. they tolerate a lot of my “farmers market produce” concoctions, so I don’t mind serving tacos or roasted sweet potatoes regularly.
bettina elias siegel says
Jenna: I agree that we often set kids up to not like something by prefacing with statements like “you might not like this because . . . ” I really try not to do that because my kids do often shock me with what they do like (and with what they won’t eat – stuff that seems so innocuous to me.) I’ll look at the link you sent, too. Thanks as always for commenting here. – Bettina