Jessica Seinfeld got it right when she urged parents to deceive their children.
Her book Deceptively Delicious (2008) made a big impact on many moms I know,
and in turn, positively impacted the lives of their many children by making their
everyday meals more healthy through altering the ingredients to include vegetables.
In their study, the researchers served vegetable-enhanced entrées to 39 children between the ages of 3 and 6 on three separate days. They tested three familiar foods — zucchini bread for breakfast, pasta with a tomato-based sauce for lunch and chicken noodle casserole for dinner. The team modified the standard recipes for these foods by adding a variety of puréed vegetables to reduce the calories in the entrées by 15 percent and 25 percent.
“We incorporated several vegetables into the dishes, including broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, tomatoes and squash,” said Maureen Spill, a post-doctoral fellow in nutritional sciences and the study’s lead author. “We were pleased to find that the children found the vegetable-enhanced versions to be equally acceptable to the standard recipes.”
According to Spill, the children ate the same weight of food regardless of the vegetable content of the entrées. And when they ate the vegetable-enhanced entrées as opposed to the standard-recipe entrées, their daily vegetable intake nearly doubled while their calorie intake decreased by 11 percent. The team’s findings are online July 25 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Pretty Awesome right?
I regularly add Wheat Germ to my families Meat dishes.
I add Flax Seed to their baked goods.
I have a few healthy tricks up my own sleeve to deceive my
husband and children into eating healthier.
Turns out it makes a really big difference!
(I hope they never find out) 🙂
LOVE MELISSA:)
Thanks so much for following me. I’m now following on twitter and your blog. Check out my fb page when you get you get a chance. I look forward to reading a lot more from another mom blogger
SocialStudiesSoubrette
I need to get that cookbook. I have been contemplating tricking my family for a bit now. This seals the deal. Thanks so much for sharing that article!
Frazzled Mama
Hi!! I’m stopping by and following from Wild Weekend Blog Hop. I hope you’ll check out my blog Frazzled Mama at http://frazzled-mama.com and follow me back.
Hope you have a good weekend.
Michelle
That’s awesome! I love it. I think a lot of times, my kids won’t eat vegetables because of the textures. If it’s pureed and mixed in, they wouldn’t know the difference! We eat a lot of whole grains here. Almost no white stuff in my house. Everything is whole wheat pasta, 12 grain bread, whole wheat pancakes, brown rice, etc. So, I figure at least if I can’t eat their veggies all of the time, they’re getting extra fiber and vitamins from those.
Nancy
Found your blog during this first snow of the year in CT, 10/29! This article took me way back. I have 43 year old twins and the baby is 32. I used to finely chop liver and put it in creamstyle corn and call it “corn soup”..they never knew what hit them. And because peas were frowned upon in certain circles, they were known as “roll-y beans” in our house. I might add that they are all healthy upstanding adults with no particular neuroses that I seem to have caused with my deception.
Jenny at dapperhouse
WOW! Corn and Liver? Sounds very bad but chock full of IRON! And I agree…with children often times you just have to change the name of something and it becomes desirable! I have tricked my own children in this way too 😉 and it worked…especially for my last one who is stubborn!
Thanks for the comment and stay warm. We just lit our first fire in our fireplace this season from the chill. your snow will blow over here to Chicago before Thanksgiving. Take Care.