In Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s book Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right Dr. Fuhrman claims kids will eat what is available.  If you stock your pantry with healthy food instead of processed food, they WILL EAT! Without coaxing, coercion tc.   A child who refuses to eat fruits and vegetables and only eats chocolate chip cookies and french fries, does it because cookies and fries are available to him.  It is the parents fault they are eating chocolate chip cookies and french fries.   A child WILL NOT I repeat will NOT starve to death if you don’t provide what they want.   Knowing this must be true, I figured, the only way to get my 4 year old to stop eating hot dogs was to simply not buy them any more, for anyone.  This is tough for me because at $0.79 for eight of them, it’s quite a bargain.   For several days he would ask for a hot dog every day.  I would tell him we don’t have any, and he would beg to go to the store to buy some.  Well, after a few days ( I think it only took 4 or 5), he literally stopped asking for hot dogs.  If it’s not available, he can’t eat any!  It’s much easier than having them “saved for a special occasion or quick snack” and then trying to keep him from wanting one.  Out of sight, out of mind!

Normally I am opposed to hiding vegetables.  I have always felt like kids should know and choose to eat vegetables so when they leave the nest, they will continue to eat them.  Well, I wanted to try some recipes from Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food or the Sneaky Chef because I can also put veggies “on the side” and they’ll get double the benefits.  I first tried this with pureed broccoli, coated chicken peices with it, than dipped it in breadcrumbs.  My kids were really nervous by the fact their chicken nuggets were green.   They each reluctantly ate one.  I thought they were quite tasty.  They probably would have fought me less on that one if I had used pureed cauliflower.  On a more inconspicuous side, I tried pureed butternut squash in pumpkin bread.  WOW, that was a big hit for everyone.  It was seriously scrumptious!!