Pre-schoolers and young schoolers can be tricky to feed at times; maintaining that five a day may require a certain level of creativity.
Whilst reading the brilliant Blue Zones newsletter I came across some research which backs up my theory that it’s all about how you sell the concept of vegetable eating which gets the veggies where they need to be.
Brian Wansink, a Cornell professor and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think, has found that giving vegetables a funky name quickly makes them more appealing.
“ In interviews with hundreds of 3-to-5-year-olds, Wansink and his researchers found that pre-schoolers ate broccoli like it was candy when they were pretending to be dinosaurs eating a dinosaur tree.”
So get creative and lay on the enthusiasm around veggies if you are keen to up the five a day!
Here’s one I made last week, my kids named it ‘Sunny Sweetcorn Summer Yum’
Ingredients:
3 corn on the cob,
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic
Celery, thinly sliced
Chicken stock
1 teaspoon turmeric
Chilli flakes, fresh parsley and bay leaf
Coconut Oil
Sea salt and black pepper
How to:
Sauté the onion and garlic in coconut oil until translucent (add a little stock and cook at a low temperature). Add the turmeric. Shear off the corn from the cob and add along with the celery. Add a cup of chicken stock with bay leaf. Add a few chilli flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until the corn is tender. Drain off any excess liquid id required. Goes well served alongside chicken or fish.