Picky Eaters? Tips on How to Introduce Vegetables

New on Associated Content:

I didn't always like vegetables. Sure, I ate kid favorites like french fries and corn on the cob, and I even enjoyed green peas and baked beans. But boy, was I picky about the rest.

I'd eat baked potatoes, but only if I could leave behind the skin. I liked tomatoes one year, then decided they were too squishy the next. I loved salad, if by salad you meant cucumbers topped with cheese, bacon bits, and chow mein noodles.

I wouldn't touch mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbage, and shall I go on, or do you get the point? If it wasn't bread, cheese, or meat, odds are I wasn't interested.

When I grew into adulthood and moved out on my own, I decided it was time to let childhood prejudices go. It was embarrassing to ask my mom if she's eat the broccoli off my plate if I ordered the apricot chicken when I was in my 20s.

Still, while I'd shaken off my aversion to veggies like lettuce and celery years before, taking on the broccoli monster still sounded daunting. George H.W. Bush still hated broccoli in his old age, so who said I would be any different?

Go read the rest! It's delicious.

This article moves away from cooking tips and more into general ideas about disguising vegetables or making them more accessible to the skittish. The point about cutting them very small is the best in my opinion. It's way easier to handle a little bite than a big one because you're not stuck chewing it for a long time in case you don't really like it right away.

Interested in seeing everything I've published on Associated Content? Visit my profile page for the full list.

Cooking Tips to Help Picky Eaters Learn to Love Vegetables

New over on Associated Content:

When you hear vegetables, do you think "Yuck!"?

Do you have a child (or, heaven forbid, spouse) whose veggies always seem to end up in the dog's dish?

Do you put white potatoes next to your chicken and biscuits and call it dinner?

Then these tips are for you. Welcome to the wonderful world of vegetables.

Food neophobia, or the fear of new foods, shouldn't be dismissed as mere pickiness. Studies suggest the condition may be genetic, an impulse born into children to help them survive by being unwilling to try that pretty but poisonous berry growing on the random bush. Kids who turn up their noses at new foods aren't doing so just to annoy you; they're responding to primal instincts.

Nevertheless, you shouldn't resign yourself to a couple decades of hot dogs and chicken fingers. We need to teach kids (and adults who never outgrew childhood tastes) to enjoy nutritious foods to set them on the healthy path in life. It takes persistence and patience, but you can persuade a person to try new foods. Just remember, it can take many attempts before a hesitant bite turns to a favorite treat. Keep at it!

Go check it out! I'd appreciate it.

I published two articles recently on ways to make vegetables more appealing. It's hard for me to recall now what it was like to recoil at the sight of almost all veggies on my plate, but I do remember perfectly well all the tricks I played on myself to get over my vegetable (and other food) fears.

Some of my suggestions may seem counterintuitive (as in, what's the point of getting someone to eat a healthy veggie if it's prepared so unhealthily?), but the point is to offer the medicine with a spoonful of sugar the first few times to make it less scary. Once you know you can eat deep-fried green beans without gagging, you'll be more likely to give them a chance plain.

Interested in seeing everything I've published on Associated Content? Visit my profile page for the full list.

Less Now Means More (Variety) Later

At lunch today, I dug eagerly into some leftover pastitsio, one of my favorite pasta dishes. It's dusted with sharp pecorino cheese, stuffed with cinnamon-scented ground meat, and topped with a rich, eggy crema.

Excuse me while I drool.

I cut a generous piece, but I knew before I was even halfway through that I would be left craving more. I loved every decadent bite, but even with the need to clear out the fridge before Turkey Day, could I justify a second slice?

I knew the answer, and so should you by now. But how could I change my perspective so that I wouldn't spend the rest of the day dreaming about stuffing my face with Greek pasta goodness?

What I needed to remember was that eating less food now means leaving more room for other delicious foods later.

Think about it. What's so great about eating? The variety of tastes! No one would get excited about food if chocolate cake was all there ever was to eat. No matter how much you love fudgy confections, they would lose their appeal after days of nothing but.

Surely you've been told more than once in your life to "leave room for dessert." That's simply a more specific way of saying "don't overeat now - there's still so many other enticing tastes you could spend those calories on!"

What happened with my lunch today, then? Well, I reminded myself that I had a fridge full of foods other than pastisio, many much healthier yet still yummy.

I elected to grab an orange instead to fill the space left in my stomach. A great choice for me - I haven't had one in months, so the juicy, sweet-tart flavor excited my tastebuds in a way another plateful of pastitsio never could. Plus, I knew the orange was both low in calories and full of vitamin C and fiber to keep my body healthy.

Delicious.

Technorati Tags:
diet, dieting, food, healthy eating, weight loss

Creating Comfort Without Food

A new post from Fit Fare, featuring advice from a show I caught only by happenstance:

A couple weeks ago, I was watching the Food Network as I fussed with some web site maintenance when Ellie Krieger started rattling off a list that caught my attention. I snatched my pocket notebook off the coffee table and started scrawling quickly, a throwback to my journalism days.

Then I remembered I have a TiVo, and I backed up the program to catch all I had missed in a more civilized manner.

Regardless.

That day's episode of Healthy Appetite was devoted to comfort foods. While Ellie Krieger apparently developed the recipes to provide mood-lifting nutrition and homestyle pampering, she took a few minutes to remind the audience that to live a healthy lifestyle, don't turn immediately to food when in need of a pick-me-up.

I debated whether this post really belonged on Fit Fare or Edible TV, but in the end I decided that theme trumped form.

While I do watch a lot of Food Network's daytime instructional shows, Healthy Appetite is one I haven't caught much. It's not on every day, and I felt skeptical of her recipes when it premiered: No matter how many TV cooks try to pass off baked chicken fingers with an oil-laced breading as health food, I'm not buying it.

Still, considering how much my focus has shifted to healthy eating in recent years, it might be time to take a second look at this series. Ellie Krieger tells you the health benefits of each significant ingredient she uses, so you at least know why the white-meat chicken in those fingers is nutritious.

Here are direct links to the recipes featured in the episode "Feel Good Factor":

Wheat Berry Salad
Balsamic Strawberries with Ricotta Cream
Cracked Pepper Potato Chips with Onion Dip
Lettuce Cups with Tofu and Beef

Photo: Colleen Fischer

Technorati Tags:
Fit Fare, food, healthy eating, comfort food, stress reduction

Keeping a Food Diary

Guess what!?

I have the secret to weight loss!!!!!

AND . . . I'm going to share it with you!!!!!!!!! Woohoo!!!!!!

HERE IT COMES . . .

KEEP SCROLLING . . .

JUST A LITTLE LONGER . . .

The secret is . . .

IFF (calories out) > (calories in), THEN future weight < current weight

(In other words: When you burn more calories than you take in, you lose weight!)

Anticlimactic, no? But it would appear that most dieters don't realize this simple fact. Otherwise, why would there be such a booming trade in diet aids?

Books claiming to trick your body into dropping pounds are a dime a dozen. Plenty of companies will take your money in exchange for their pills, potions, and plans to whittle down your waist.

But in the end, what works? Any system that involves you eating less (possibly alongside moving more, in the most effective ones) leads to weight loss. Counting Points? Counting carbs? In a roundabout way, you're doing nothing more than counting calories.

You don't need a fancy plan or special food to achieve the same results. However, one simple tool can help you on your path to taking in fewer calories: a food diary.

A food diary (or journal, if you prefer) can be as simple as a notebook in which you write down everything you eat throughout the day, or it could be as complex as a web site or software program with a database for matching up your eats with their calorie content.

Whichever way you go, whether you make lists and estimates on paper or stringently count every calorie in a program, you'll immediately notice a benefit to keeping a record of what you eat. Being confronted with the evidence of what's crossed your lips will lead you to think twice before stuffing them with unsavory goods.

A food diary helps you realize just how much you are eating. With a long record to look back on, you can pick out the poor eating patterns and see where your food pitfalls are. Once you know what's holding you back -- once you have information -- you will find it easier to walk the path toward healthier eating.

But you don't have to take my word for it. A study run by Kaiser Permanente showing that using a food diary can double your weight loss made a big splash in the news not so long ago. Even better, the study found that even the most casual tracking has a strong effect on your ability to change your eating habits because writing down what you eat naturally makes you more reflective about it.

Give food journaling a try. Stick with something simple at first to get the ball rolling, and then you can scale upward if you feel like it. In the coming weeks, I'll provide some tools and examples to help you move beyond simple lists if you need more structure.

And it won't even cost you $19.95 a month.

Graphic: Colleen Fischer

Technorati Tags:
diet, dieting, food, healthy eating, weight loss