First, it's important to recognize that children do not yet have fully developed palates and are overly sensitive to tastes and smells. Children in nearly all cultures do not like piquant or bitter tastes, and they do love sweet. (Breast milk is incredibly sweet.) This is what I like to think of as the physiological reasons for the gastronomic side of children. What's more interesting -- particularly in America -- is the cultural aspect of what children will and won't eat. Why do American children eat so poorly? Why does it seem so difficult to feed them? Why do they hate vegetables? Why do American children become obese so easily?

There is evidence that genetics play a part in poor eating but are not the whole story. The lack of a strong culinary culture in America also may play an important role. Not only is there a lack of a strong culinary culture in the society at large but, more important, within many nonimmigrant families. Studies of children's eating habits show that calm, repeated exposure to new foods every day for between five days to two weeks is an effective way to overcome a child's fears. How likely is it that a child will want to eat vegetables if his or her parents don't eat them too? Each family creates -- or can create -- its own culinary appropriateness and traditions.

Because of the nature of my work writing cookbooks -- and my passion for food that led me to that career --  for nearly the entire lives of my children, I have cooked all kinds of foods. In particular, our "home food" is, in general, Italian and Mediterranean. From an early age, I offered my children these "home" foods on a regular basis and they ate them. They were never encouraged to "eat," which strikes me as unusual as encouraging someone to pee.

The Magic of Family Meals

From the beginning, our family ate two meals a day together, seven days a week. Even though my kids no longer live at home, we still will eat meals together when they visit. I have friends whose children are finicky, poor eaters. They were that way when they were 5 and when they were 20. They eat very few family meals together. More important, the parents do not cook or eat the kinds of foods they want their children to eat, for instance, vegetables. Their cooking is uninspired and, in fact, few actually cook, preferring prepared meals from some supermarket or takeout. They don't cook; they heat. They have no "home food." Their cooking, when they cook at all, can be described as "international eclectic."

An American family rarely savors a meal but instead fuels up. They have no expectations of the meal to come, don't participate in choosing and examining the food, and don't care about the quality of the food they are to prepare.

It's not so much our diet as our eating habits that make us fat as a country. How often have you been asked about a particular food or told about a particular food that it is "good for you" or "bad for you." This distinction is utter nonsense. No food is good or bad for you. What's good or bad are your habits and the balance of all the foods you eat.

One also hears the complaint that there is no time to cook and the modern woman or man needs time-savers. Personally, I find choosing efficiency over culinary joy depressing. What exactly are poor eaters doing in their life that gives them so little time to cook and eat together? What can be more important? Even before I wrote professionally about food, I always had time for cooking.

Starting Food Traditions

Is there a solution?  For many people, there is a hopeless feeling, especially if their children are grown and it's "too late." A best-selling cookbook in 2007 was "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food" by Jessica Seinfeld, the wife of the comedian. The very title is a window into their home. Food is scary; there is no joy. I say it's never too late, and there's no reason a tradition can't be started from scratch. You don't need several generations of family tradition, although that helps.

You can focus on a holiday, or simply celebrate some food. My girlfriend Michelle and her daughters celebrate Hatch chiles from New Mexico each summer. In our family, besides Thanksgiving, which has its own family menu, we also have a lobsterfest every August. It's a tradition we started about 25 years ago when we were on vacation in Cape Cod. It's grown to such an extent that it has gone beyond the family, and now I have to insist on BYOL to stay out of the poor house. Long ago, my kids set the menu: clam chowder (the real kind from Cape Cod), steamed lobster, drawn butter, coleslaw, corn on the cob, and Parker House rolls.

We save all the lobster shells, and I boil them for about four hours to make lobster stock that then becomes the basis for a variety of future dishes. When the kids were little they would pass their shells and carcasses to me for inspection to make sure they successfully picked all the meat out. They always had difficulty with the fan shells. We were purists.

What about kids and vegetables? If you don't eat vegetables it's unlikely your kids will. However, there is one foolproof way to incorporate vegetables into your cooking that will make everyone happy: Don't make such a big deal about them. Just cook them into all the other food and present a pretty dish for everyone to admire. One of my favorites is spaghetti with spinach, pine nuts and golden raisins, a real delight for everyone. Just keep extrapolating on that theme. The one dish my kids actually asked for when they were little were batter-fried broccoli – an amazing taste.

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We encouraged our kids to drink responsibly with food. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We also encouraged our children to share food with each other. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We encouraged our children to play with their food... then eat it Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We encouraged our children to understand food. Here they are on the Lacarrière family farm in the Lot, France. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We encouraged our kids to drink responsibly with food. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We also encouraged our children to share food with each other. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We encouraged our children to play with their food... then eat it Photo by Clifford A. Wright

We encouraged our children to understand food. Here they are on the Lacarrière family farm in the Lot, France. Photo by Clifford A. Wright

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Spinach in the pesto, I like it!

susienorris , November 22, 2009