Hey. Parents. Yes, you there – the one grating up a giant pile of carrots and capsicums and every other grate-able veggie on the planet, ready to smuggle into the pasta sauce you’re making for your kids.
I’ve seen you add pumpkin puree into muffins and I know that you hide veggies in fruit. I know that you tried to get the kids onto beetroot chips instead of Doritos without alerting them to the difference in substance; I know that you ended up surrendering and handing over whatever it is was the kids were screaming for at that particular moment in time.
You’re doing a good, honourable thing. You’re being a responsible parent by surreptitiously bringing peas into little Billy’s diet somehow – even if the method itself involves degrees of dishonesty, Billy needs those vitamins and nutrients and minerals somehow, and it’s not going to happen by him willingly eating peas.
And of course, Billy deserves a treat if he happily eats everything on the table. Right?
Wrong. Oh-so-very-wrong.
I’m so sorry to tell you, Parents, but apparently you’ve been going about things in the completely incorrect way.
According to Australian researchers, you’re actually doing a bad thing by rewarding kids with food when they do something good. Worst still – you’re actually screwing over your children by hiding their vegetables in their meals. By pureeing and chopping and grating and disguising those vegetables, you’re setting your kids up for a life of doomed eating.