Tricking Our Nation's Youth

Vegetables are in the news again… this time, it’s a study that finds that kids eat more vegetables if the have a cool name. It goes on to list X-Ray Vision Carrots, Power Peas and Dinosaur Broccoli Trees as names that got 4-year old kids to eat as much as 50% more of the vegetable.

Sorry, but color me dubious. I can just see what would have happened if my parents tried that crap on me.

Mother: “Here, honey, try some of these nice Dinosaur Broccoli Trees!”

Me: “Only if you want 50% more Super Technicolor Hurl all over your nice lacy tablecloth…”

You just can’t hide “heinous”, no matter what you call it. If cheese sauce can’t fix it, it can’t be fixed.

This reminds me of a story from when I first moved to Baltimore. I had quit my lousy retail job in New York and moved here to try to kick-start a new life and I was staying with my brother and his wife until I could get back on my feet.

One night after I had just started working again, I came home for dinner to the unmistakable smell of the heinous broccoli. No big deal… I could live with it on the table… no one was forcing me to eat it. (It pays not to be four years old sometimes.) So my sister-in-law puts down a big bowl of ravioli in a white sauce. Mmmmmmm, yummy. Funny, I didn’t see any of the dreaded broccoli, but whatever. Time to go to town on this ravioli. I took my first bite and …

{Clench}

My stomach totally seized up. Broccoli… it’s in there somewhere…
I looked inside the ravioli and didn’t see anything… I looked around the table. No broccoli in sight, nor was there anything else to eat. I didn’t want to make a fuss… I figured I’d just try to gut it out and finish my ravioli. I took another bite…

{Serious, almost about to hurl, clench}

No way… it was not going to go down quietly; this was going to get messy.

My brother must have seen my stricken expression and asked what was wrong.

I said, “Is there broccoli in this?”

My sister-in-law said, “I made it with Cream of Broccoli soup…”

Bingo. There’s the culprit.

My brother offered me some breaded chicken patties as an alternative. Sold!

So that was that…mystery solved, hurl avoided and lesson learned. Also, I figured it was just about time to get my own apartment.

Picture by Becca Bond