Comments on: What’s the Difference Between Boogers and Broccoli? http://jcarrot.org/whats-the-difference-between-buggers-and-broccoli/ Jews, Food, and Contemporary Issues Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 By: Edith Stevenson http://jcarrot.org/whats-the-difference-between-buggers-and-broccoli/#comment-113 Edith Stevenson Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:01:57 +0000 http://jcarrot.org/whats-the-difference-between-buggers-and-broccoli/#comment-113 whoa! wait a minute! who does the grocery shopping and cooking in your house? Probably not the 3 year old. And since when, in a nation of horribly high percentages of overweight children, will it kill a kid to go without eating a perfectly good meal just because he "doesn't like it!" I never bought a jar of baby food in my life. We had a little tiny hand seive in the early 80's (pre-mini chop cuisenarts) into which we carefully placed a couple tablespoons of whatever was on our plates, and pureed it for the 6 month old of the day. Juice was minimally offered; pop was non-existant, as was candy, other than at Halloween. No, we were not health food nuts; we were not even vegetarian then. Just whatever we ate, the kids ate. Think for a moment about Indian or Korean or Mexican families: do their youngsters only eat plain noodles and cheese, or do they grow up up being fed the same spices and weird vegetables as their parents? We had an expression in our house, that has lasted to this day, with the "kids" in their 20's now: instead of saying they don't LIKE a particular food (or, heaven forbid, they HATE it) they were taught to say, "I'm not FOND of okra (or whatever)." This may be respectfully acknowledged by the chef / parents, but it does not get them off the hook from either trying it, nor certainly getting something else for dinner! I was brought up on the you-can-sit-there-until-you- have-finished-everything-on-your-plate school of food manners, and I (smugly, I presume) swore I would never do that to my kids when I had them. It totally ignores the child's right to pass up on the meal of the day; giving them an alternative menu however doesn't teach them anything other than how well they have you wrapped around their fingers. whoa! wait a minute! who does the grocery shopping and cooking in your house? Probably not the 3 year old. And since when, in a nation of horribly high percentages of overweight children, will it kill a kid to go without eating a perfectly good meal just because he “doesn’t like it!”

I never bought a jar of baby food in my life. We had a little tiny hand seive in the early 80’s (pre-mini chop cuisenarts) into which we carefully placed a couple tablespoons of whatever was on our plates, and pureed it for the 6 month old of the day. Juice was minimally offered; pop was non-existant, as was candy, other than at Halloween. No, we were not health food nuts; we were not even vegetarian then. Just whatever we ate, the kids ate.
Think for a moment about Indian or Korean or Mexican families: do their youngsters only eat plain noodles and cheese, or do they grow up up being fed the same spices and weird vegetables as their parents?

We had an expression in our house, that has lasted to this day, with the “kids” in their 20’s now: instead of saying they don’t LIKE a particular food (or, heaven forbid, they HATE it) they were taught to say, “I’m not FOND of okra (or whatever).” This may be respectfully acknowledged by the chef / parents, but it does not get them off the hook from either trying it, nor certainly getting something else for dinner!

I was brought up on the you-can-sit-there-until-you- have-finished-everything-on-your-plate school of food manners, and I (smugly, I presume) swore I would never do that to my kids when I had them. It totally ignores the child’s right to pass up on the meal of the day; giving them an alternative menu however doesn’t teach them anything other than how well they have you wrapped around their fingers.

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