Give Peas a Chance

I was so desperate the other night to get my daughter to consider eating a vegetable that I resorted to bribery, and at a very high extortion rate: One dollar in exchange for one solitary green pea.

Spearing a single pea on my fork, I offered it to Lucy along with my $1 sales pitch. Knowing that at age 4 she doesn’t quite understand how money works, I spelled it out for her by saying, “You could use the money to buy toys.” She looked at me, looked at the pea, looked around the room at all the toys she had just acquired from and her early and chirped, “No thanks.”

According to a new study by researchers at Cornell University and London Metropolitan University, my ploy didn’t work because I was going about this getting-kids-to-eat-healthy-foods thing all wrong. As described by The Wall Street Journal’s blog “The Juggle,” the study found that factors such as where food is placed on a plate and how colorful it is can influence kids’ eating habits.

To quote The Juggle: “While adults preferred three different colors and food components on their plate (say, chicken with a side of potatoes and broccoli),  kids preferred plates with foods of six colors and seven different meal components.” One Cornell researcher told the WSJ blogger, “Compared with adults, children not only prefer plates with more elements and colors, but also their entrees placed in the front of the plate and with figurative designs.”

Ugh, figurative designs. Why does everything boil down to some song and dance negotiation with kids today? I remember my parents telling me to eat something and I just did it. We didn’t have the stones to question direct orders to eat our Brussels spouts or to finish our milk (though I famously sat out orders to finish a glass of milk at the dinner table long after the food had been cleared and everyone else had left their seats).

Anyway, who am I to question Ivy League researchers? I gave their food styling suggestion a try at dinner the night I had read this story. I made a jolly food face on Lucy’s plate, with a half of a banana as a nose and smaller banana segments for eyebrows over eyes made out of bagel halves and a mouth made out of bacon (it was breakfast-for-dinner night). For my trouble, I was told, “Mom, we don’t make faces out of our food.” The only healthy part of the meal went uneaten.

While I’m not sold on this creative plate business, I’m committed to coming up with some the whole family will eat because the list is mighty short right now and as the family chef, I’m determined to do better in 2012. Do you have any tips to foster healthy eating in the most stubborn – and unbribable – children?