Why I No Longer Say “Hidden Veg”
Food blogs, recipe videos and cookbooks are full of “hidden veg” tricks, for children and adults alike. Here’s why you won’t find any of these here… anymore.
Let them shine!
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If you’re like me and you watch a lot of cooking content online, search for dinner help with Google searches or browse through cookbooks on a regular basis, you will have come across a lot of “hidden veg” recipes. Usually, “hidden veg” dishes consist of essentially blending lots of vegetables and using them in a pasta sauce, curry recipe or similar. It can also mean “hiding” them as smaller chunks in a mac’n’cheese or similar, dishes that are known to be more palatable and sellable to us - and possibly, to our kids.
And yes, presumably a lot of the time the idea is to get children to eat vegetables with this approach. Fantastic, because vegetables, greens, fruit – these are arguably the most important ingredients we can introduce to our children and keep giving them on a regular basis. However, introducing and serving certain ingredients, is not just about making them eat them, but making them enjoy eating them. Yes, easier said than done at times, I know! But hiding them is - in my opinion - not the answer. Here’s why.
I believe that a lot of picky eating, and I don’t mean just for children, but for us adults as well, is about lack of confidence. When do you feel confident? When you feel like you are in control, and like you know what is going on around you, and especially to do with yourself. I have distinct memories of food I didn’t want to try as a child, because no one actually explained to me what was in it. I don’t blame the grown-ups for not going through the ingredient list of every single item of food for me, it’s just not something that occurs to us as adults as we just know what something is. But a child may not. And isn’t that a bit scary? Trying something you don’t even know what is? Imagine if someone came up to you at a restaurant and offered for you to try some “mystery meat” - you’d be more than a bit sceptical, wouldn’t you?
We also have associations, based on how we experienced that ingredient in the past. But that association can change! And I am telling you this from experience. My husband has completely changed his attitude towards vegetarian meals for example; we are not a vegetarian household, but a lot of the time I will make a vegetarian meal - for various reasons (more fun, often healthier, tastier and cheaper), and he has recently told me that in the beginning when I would do this he would always be really apprehensive, and every time he would be pleasantly surprised, and that I’d changed his mind about a lot of ingredients - and really, a whole approach to food. That is such a wonderful feeling! The way in which something is served makes all the difference. Someone may think they hate sprouts, when all they’ve ever had was overcooked sprouts at Christmas. Suddenly you try a sprout and carrot coleslaw and everything changes!
I also don’t believe in the idea of manipulating anyone into eating anything. I know this might be unpopular with some, who are trying desperately to get a child (or a partner) to eat some veg, and I’m sorry if that is the case. But in most cases I believe that being on the same team, being honest and involving the recipient of the meal in the making of it, will almost always have the best result. Focus on how much you love that vegetable, explore new ways of preparing and serving it (and ask for suggestions!), and also… accept that there may be periods of time where someone in your household just hates something. And that’s fine. It may pass, it may not. This is when it’s good to learn about what kind of nutrition different foods offer, so you can go between different raw ingredients and get your body what it requires.
This doesn’t mean, by the way, that you shouldn’t blend vegetables into a lovely, smooth sauce, paste or soup. But I think you should speak loudly and proudly about what you put in the meal, and shift the focus onto how wonderful vegetables are for our bodies and our minds. Let the stars of the nutrition show shine!
How is your attitude towards vegetables? Did this make you think differently about it? I’d love to hear from you! Email me at liv@thefromscratchbody.com
