• On Good Things Utah this morning – Back in 2008, Jessica Seinfeld released Deceptively Delicious, a cookbook teaching parents how to sneak, say, spinach into dishes beloved by children who would sooner hurl a broccoli floret across the room than pop it into their mouth. Homemade ketchup created from carrots? Chocolate chip cookies made with chickpeas? Picky kids were (theoretically) none the wiser, and moms learned to make peace with a steady stream of grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets and the like, so long as they were furtively packed with veggies. But when food writer and mom Jean Choi posted on her WhatGreatGrandmaAte Instagram account about making veggie-packed dishes for her little girl without her realizing it, she was accused of giving them “trust issues.”
    • “My mom never hid veggies, she just knew how to cook and make them taste good,” one commenter wrote. “Because of her I have an amazing relationship with food.” Choi defended herself against the “idiotic holier-than-thou mom shaming” by sharing that she does also give her daughter vegetables in “their full forms,” and that she has found that cooking with her kid helps the tot reconsider dishes she might ordinarily reject. The Korean Paleo author also pointed out that some kids have a sensory food aversion that causes them to avoid certain ingredients if cooked or presented in their traditional forms. But where do dietitians stand on the practice of slipping veggies into a child’s meal? Jennifer Anderson, registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, tells Yahoo Life that doing so might backfire with some kids. “If your child doesn’t like cauliflower, but they do like quesadillas, you may think it would be great to include a bit of riced cauliflower in with the cheese of the quesadilla,” she says. “Picky eaters can often tell extremely small changes, though. When your picky eater finds the cauliflower, they may stop eating quesadillas and even other foods that are round or white as well. Is that risk worth your child eating one tablespoon of cauliflower?” Leah Hackney, pediatric dietitian and chief operating officer of BLW Meals App, is also wary of the practice. “In most cases I do not recommend ‘sneaking’ vegetables, especially if your child is extremely picky,” Hackney says. Like Anderson, she believes that tricking a kid into eating veggies “can break trust with the child and actually cause them to reject the food further, or in the future even reject some of their favorites that they previously ate.” We hope you join us this morning as our hosts dive into this Hot Topic and so much more on GTU!