Vegetable Refusers

Our senior food editor Cassie Best solves your midweek cooking dilemmas with new simple recipe ideas.

- Cassie Best

the dilemma

My child won’t eat vegetables.

the solution

Serve vegetables in a variety of ways. Purées and sauces are fine but try to include whole and chopped vegetables as part of their meals, too. Even if they refuse to eat them, they’ll soon become the norm and hopefully your kids will learn to love them.

Whether they start out happily munching broccoli from a young age or have always refused to eat their greens, most children will go through a stage where they won’t eat something, and vegetables are usually enemy number one. Getting the good stuff into your little ones can seem like a never-ending battle, so it’s not surprising that some parents sneak ‘hidden’ veg into their kid’s dinners. The topic is hotly debated – one camp thinks that hiding vegetables will only encourage veg-phobia, others just want to get nutrients into their children however they can. I tend to opt for a bit of both when cooking for my daughter, and this recipe keeps us both happy; she gets to experience different tastes and textures, and I know she’s eating a balanced diet.

Green spaghetti & meatballs