Hating on Veggies

Why do kids hate vegetables so much?

Chef Giney Villar said it’s because they’re not really exposed to it. Busy parents resort to easy to prepare processed food and convenient takeaways. The influence of fastfood advertising doesn’t help. I remember attending a baby’s christening celebration held at a fastfood chain. Children learn early on that unhealthy food is the best for them.

To promote healthy and sustainable eating among parents and school children, demonstrate healthy and sustainable ways of cooking food for children, and come up with simple doable list of activities for children and their parents on how they can eat healthy and help in climate change mitigation with their food choices, #IAmHampasLupa Ecological Agriculture Movement together with Greenpeace organized the “Healthy Eats and Treats School Caravan” at West Fairview Elementary School on February 3, 2018.

Part of the event was a cooking demo by Chef Giney who introduced how to prepare tasty tofu patties. Just mix ground tofu, a little flour, grated carrots, chopped onions and onion leaves, plus salt to taste. Then it’s ready for frying. Chef Giney likewise showed how to make spaghetti sauce out of real ingredients – a mix of tomato paste, eggplant, carrots, onion, garlic, salt, sugar, and oil. Really, this aversion towards veggies can be prevented if we try to be a little more creative with our cooking.

 

 

During the school caravan, I asked the participating students about their favorite fruit and vegetable. Their answer, apple and squash. The most hated veggie, as expected, is ampalaya (bitter gourd). All of a sudden, a group of kids started chanting “chicken joy.” We had fish and pinakbet (Filipino vegetable dish) for lunch and I noticed not a lot of the kids finished the pinakbet. These say a lot about the current generation’s eating habit.

It’s not too late, though. As Chef Giney said, we can actually train our taste buds. Our tongues are so used to artificial food with high salt and high sugar content but we can start lessening our intake of these and slowly transition to healthier more plant-based diet. We do this for the sake of our bodies and the planet.