Reply to Which of these would you consider “eating a vegetable”?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I will give context later, just curious, of these foods, if your kids ate them would you have consider them to have eaten a vegetable?

Black beans
Small bits of onions, peppers, garlic cooked into the back beans
Small quantities of spinach (visible) stirred into another dish
Handful of spinach mixed into a berry smoothie (not visible)
Raw spinach as the base for a salad
Purple cabbage slaw
Corn
Avocado
Tomatoes
Cucumbers 
Mango
Mango salsa with red onions and cilantro visible in it
Slices of red peppers
[/quote]

I have an extremely picky eater who vocally hates vegetables, so I think I understand the origin of this question. I don't consider beans or lentils to be vegetables, though we do serve a lot of both to our veggie-hating kid. I don't worry much about the difference between veggies incorporated into a dish (like onions and peppers in beans or on their own) because you are consuming it either way.

Obviously eating a healthy serving of something is better from a nutritional/palate standpoint then having a few tiny nibbles. But on the other hand, a healthy serving of spinach snuck into a smoothy is less of a "win" regarding a picky eater than having her nibble half a leaf of spinach on its own, because the latter indicates more of an acceptance of this as a food she's okay with.

Corn, avocados, and cucumbers are easy wins if your kid doesn't really like veggies, because they avoid some of the texture, bitterness, and color issues that kids who hate veggies often get hung up on. Similar thing with something like butternut squash soup (it's sweet, it doesn't look like vegetables) or sweet potato fries. These are veggies but our kid doesn't think of them that way so it's a nutritional win but, again, doesn't solve that issue of the child who says they hate vegetables and is afraid of salad.

And anyway, corn, avocados, tomatoes, and mango are fruits. They are good ones! And have more in common with vegetables than, say, strawberries. So again, good for expanding the palate but not as nutritionally useful as eating a dark leafy green, from the perspective of trying to get your kid nutrients that they might miss because they won't eat actual veggies.

I think you need to take any win you can get and not set an unreasonable standard for yourself. My kid is not going to eat a spinach salad anytime soon, she will actually fake-retch at the site of carrots or zucchini, even when incorporated into something she loves like a muffin. But she will eat some spinach leaves in a smoothy, is okay with cooked peppers with beans and/or rice, will eat corn and avocados on their own. We take what we can get, continue to seve up the stuff she says she hates but don't make her eat it, and remind ourselves that what matters is that she's healthy and fed.[/quote]

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