The Great Big Vegetable Challenge

[razzleccentric]

This is such a cool idea I gotta share it. The Great Big Vegetable Challenge is a blog about one mother's efforts to get her veggie-hating 7-year-old son to try something new. I was bemused by what she says in her first post:

All I want to achieve though in this challenge is to cajole, charm or even trick him into eating just a little more than potatoes. I read that there are 200 types to choose from and thousands of variations on those to try. There has to be something that he will like. And given all the pressure on us as a parents to get our kids to eat healthily it almost feels like a legal obligation to at least try. No doubt in twenty years time there will be newspaper reports of children suing their parents for failing to instill healthy eating habits in them. Maybe a passive-snacking law will be passed to protect the impressionable dears from being exposed to unhealthy eating habits.

They started back in November 2006 and - with input and recipe suggestions from other parents - they are working their way through the alphabet of vegetables. They've already hit artichokes, asparagus, aubergine, beans, beets, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, and courgettes. Each vegetable gets sampled 2-4 times in different recipes. Freddy (the veg-hater in question) rates them as he likes. Every post includes a photograph of the food (and/or Freddy eating it) and all the recipes are linked on the site. They are particularly interested in finding other people to try the GBVC along with them.

What a COOL idea! And not just for kids - I can think of PLENTY OF ADULTS who could use the same challenge. (You know who you are...)

[T]he GreatBVC is about a new approach. It's about trying to inspire change. Learning new ways of cooking. Going on an adventure to find out what works in other homes. And having a laugh in the process. Or not, as the case might be.

Anyone interested in taking the challenge with us? ;)

Comments

[lothie.livejournal.com]

Huh, my kids all love vegetables and always have. There is no non-snotty way to say this, but I've always assumed (based on experience and available evidence) that if a kid doesn't like vegetables it's because he or she wasn't exposed to them frequently at an early age (i.e. post-baby food, when they start eating what their parents eat). I'd actually love to be proven wrong on that, i.e. hear from someone who either says they've always had vegetables present at meals but their kids still hate them, or from a (now grown) kid who says that his or her parents always had vegetables at meals but they still hate them.

[peradouro.livejournal.com]

My children's first foods were strained prunes, squash and yams. For finger foods they had peas, carrots and green beans. I hate those nasty teething biscuits. I didn't give them much meat until they had several teeth so by that time they were well acquainted with veggies and fruits.

My cousin's children all "hated vegetables and fruit". Astounding how that when they were at my house they not only ate them they asked for exclusively fruit or vegetable seconds. One child ate nearly a pan of squash by himself. Basically the facts are 1) she never learned to cook; 2) she only ever bought canned discount veg which were dumped in a pan, boiled then served; 3) her shopping consisted of diet soda, hot dogs, ground beef, frozen "dinners", bread, ice cream, chips, noodles, ketchup and 2 gallons of milk. Seriously, she made spaghetti sauce with ketchup, even after I showed her how to make sauce, because it was "quicker".

[spydielives.livejournal.com]

I got my twenty-year-old son Kitten to try artichokes last night by giving my younger son Wonka the leftovers from my dinner out without even offering them to Kitten. They smelled *so good*, Kitten asked to try some. I put some of everything on a small plate, just a sample. He tried it all... and found he actually liked it.

He said he had no idea, but he wouldn't have tried it if I had told him what it was.

[starrchilde.livejournal.com]

Other than Jackson, who isn't fond of asparagus, my kids haven't met a vegetable they don't like yet. Which is amazing, since Ras hates most veggies and I am guilty of having a few that I won't touch either (peas and peppers primarily).

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Can I ask for an x-post to HAES, pretty-please?

[nakednatalie.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun but would be impossible to do it with the move and all right now. But I've bookmarked the site and will be getting back to it. :o)

[sydb42.livejournal.com]

My kids will eat almost any veggie put in front of them, unless it's over-cooked. I once got them broccoli from Piccadilly (hate that restaurant) and half the broccoli in one of the bowls was practically gray from being cooked so long, the other half was still green. My 1 year old (who got that bowl) carefully picked out the green broccoli and didn't touch the gray stuff (I don't blame her). Broccoli, btw, is their favorite vegetable, with tomatoes being a close second.

Scout sometimes likes carrots and sometimes doesn't. Last I heard, she didn't like them, but she recently asked for some so I bought them. They also like pretty much all fruit they've had, but that's easy since fruit is sweet.

As for how often they get veggies, they get them more now that we eat at home more (we started that before the Great Fast Food Ban, but now even moreso, obviously), but I did give them vegetables for lunch and dinner everyday when they were babies, so I think that probably helped them like veggies.

[hausfrauatu.livejournal.com]

The local preschool has Vegetable Fear Factor. It's competitive veggie eating. They have a trophy made out of an old bowling trophy with the ball made to look like a big tomato.