agonyaunt | (no subject)

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Dear Care and Feeding,

These days, because of inflation, our family has begun to change our diets a bit. My 12-year-old, however, has been struggling a lot with it. Because veggies typically eaten raw (romaine lettuce, peppers, salad greens, etc.) have become more expensive, we’ve switched to eating a lot of steamed vegetables, and she hates it. She will gladly eat salads and raw veggies of pretty much any kind, and she doesn’t have a problem with eating healthy foods in general. It’s cooked vegetables, however, that really set her off. Any time I give them to her, she picks at her plate for at least an hour, and it has become really frustrating.

She explained to me that she hates the squishy and mushy texture of cooked vegetables, as well as the smell, but nobody else in our family, including my younger child, has a problem with it. Apparently (she could be exaggerating), she has wanted to throw up while eating them, so that may give you a sense of her discomfort. I’ve explained the reason why we’ve switched to eating fewer raw veggies, and while she understands, I really wish she would stop behaving like she’s eating some kind of poison when I serve her dinner. My husband and I put effort into preparing dinner, and I’ve begun to interpret her behavior as ungrateful. She’s 12! She should be able to, for lack of a better euphemism, suck it up. What should I do?

— Eat Your (Cooked) Vegetables

Dear EYCV,

Your daughter isn’t alone. Do a Google search for “I hate steamed veggies” and you’ll find plenty of like-minded folks out there. And while “sucking it up” is a fine expectation for someone to eat food they’re not excited about, I think in your daughter’s case it may be unrealistic and unfair, if we take her at her word. (I hope I don’t have to explain why “Everyone else likes it” isn’t constructive, either.)

I’m sure your daughter understands the reasons for your grocery strategy; she just wants to enjoy her food—and that is understandable. My theory is that you might be overcooking and under-seasoning your veggies for her palate. If you’re microwaving them, shave a minute off the cook time and see how she does. Try sautéing or (my favorite) roasting rather than microwaving. And while I’ve always found olive oil, salt and a dash of pepper bring out the best in my cooked veggies, this website has a few other options to consider when it comes to seasoning and enhancing your veggies. Enlist your daughter’s help by taste-and-texture-testing different cooking methods and flavor profiles. You could even turn it into a game by giving the rest of the family scorecards at each meal to rate the veggies you prepare. Essentially, I think you need to switch your mindset away from food enforcer and into food detective, and work with your daughter rather than against her.

Finally, double-check that your processed veggies are really giving you the cost savings you think. Some produce, like carrots, might actually be cheaper raw than their canned and frozen varieties or counterparts. You can dig into the data from the USDA on your daughter’s favorites and compare against what you see on your grocer’s shelves. Maybe you’ll luck out and find a few raw veggies you’ll be able to throw her way.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/son-favorite-violent-game-care-and-feeding-advice.html

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The columnist does a good job of pointing out that there are other options besides "raw" and "steamed".

I can think of a few other things I would've said, though. I'm not sure they would've been helpful, but here they are:

1. Stop taking your child's food preferences/aversions so personally.

2. Do not make your children sit at the table for an hour. 12 years is more than old enough to decide how much she wants to eat of dinner.

3. You are legally obligated to feed your children. Your children have no counterpart obligation to be grateful to you for doing this. Take the word "ungrateful" out of your vocabulary.

4. I know groceries are going up up up in price. However, I have a hard time believing that salads are the only thing you could cut out of the budget. Maybe take another look, and cut out your coffee or start carpooling/taking the bus a few days a week instead of driving to work or find some other little splurge that the adults benefit from but the kids don't really care about, and use the money you save to make your daughter a salad a few days a week so she can have that instead of the other vegetables. It can be a smaller salad, and the adults don't have to eat it. You're the adults, maybe *you* should suck it up.

Also, I wonder how daughter feels about

eg tinned sweetcorn and tinned beetroot, and whether either of these are options

Word. Also if the kid likes sour flavors try fresh pickles which preserve food for a few extra days

I wouldn't encourage anyone to be carpooling or taking the bus with the ongoing COVID pandemic,

but I cosign the other suggestions.

I wouldn't hesitate to suggest it if I know that the people in question are not generally acting as though the pandemic is ongoing, though of course I wouldn't if I knew they were!

If you're going to crowded parties and whatnot unmasked, you may as well take the bus over at that point. Better if they stayed home entirely, but many people don't do what I think is better.

Edited 2023-06-06 23:45 (UTC)

100% this! Also, I have no idea if neurotypicals have such a strong aversion to food. Given the mom's "sorry about you" attitude, I'm reading the child as autistic.

I'm also baffled at how a grown adult expect as a 12 year old to "suck it up." As adults we are often so rarely in stations where we have to "suck it up" and eat food we find abhorrant (and that's usually for social situations). Why then would we expect children to regularly "suck it up" and eat food they find abhorrent?

12 year old won't starve. Find another vegetable for them to eat instead. Or better yet, teach them how to cook. I completely get "parents aren't short order cooks" and I 100% agree with that. Teach the 12 year old how to cook. It's a valuable life skill and allows you to delegate out "short order" cooking to the individual who needs a short order cook. You can supervise and start with delegating cooking vegetables once a week to the 12 year old. Eventually, they will know how to make a vegetable they like, the rest of the family can go back to enjoying the cooked vegetables they enjoy while the 12 year old can cook their own vegetable dish.

I agree with every single one of these suggestions!

she hates the squishy and mushy texture of cooked vegetables, as well as the smell

If mush is the result of LW's cooking veggies, LW is not cooking them properly.

That said, some vegetables, notably cruciferous ones like broccoli or turnip, develop a strong flavour when cooked compared to raw, that can be unpleasant for some people. Why not just serve these veggies raw for the daughter.

If mush is the result of LW's cooking veggies, LW is not cooking them properly.
I wonder if they've also switched to frozen/canned vegetables rather than fresh - this could greatly affect the texture of the vegetables. Like, fresh steamed green beans are still crispy, frozen green beans are limp, and canned green beans require no teeth to eat.

I have the impression this is what they've done, rather than thinking they were so stubborn as to buy fresh veg and refuse to just leave an uncooked chunk for the kid. OTOH with people one never knows.

We did a lot of canned and frozen vegetables growing up - I think I was in my 20s the first time I had fresh peas or green beans that had been cooked! Huge difference in taste and texture.

If she eats almost anything raw, can't they just serve her carrots, broccoli etc raw?

Also, it is my experience that sometimes people seem to view steaming as a trendy alternative to boiling that means it isn't overcooked - and then proceed to overcook by steaming.

I'm guessing they also switched to canned/frozen vegetables as a cost-saving measure

If they have access to any kind of outdoor space and a reasonable climate, which I fully understand they might not, 12 is also a great age to get into gardening, and greens can be quite easy to grow. (Seriously, I seeded my raised bed once with arugula nine years ago, and I’ve been ripping it out of every sidewalk crack ever since.)

Age 12 is plenty old enough to have some input into how to solve this problem. Compare items, compare prices, learn and share new cooking methods.

The letter writer has an attitude problem. Take that away and the practical problem (we found some foods you like, but they got really expensive and you don't care for the cheaper alternatives we've identified) has a lot of potential solutions.

I'm kind of confused as to what's actually going on here.

--Have they switched to only vegetables that *can't* be consumed raw, like, idk, yam or poke leaves? There are very few vegetables regularly eaten in the US that can't be eaten raw if you want to eat them raw. Some are more healthful when cooked (or tastier or easier to eat or less likely to give you gas) but if you're buying the vegetables raw, even if they're ones your family would traditionally have eaten cooked, chances are it would be fine to leave a serving or so raw and see if she likes them that way.

(if you are at the point of having no vegetables other than stuff like *foraged* poke, look into resources in your community that help with food insecurity! Especially this time of year they often have certain fresh veggies coming out their ears!)

--What seems more likely is that you've moved to buying mostly frozen vegetables, given you specify "steamed" (and a lot of frozen vegetables even come 'ready to steam'.) In which case, my suggestion is to try new things - all of you. Frozen vegetables come in a lot of different textures, and there are vegetables that I absolutely won't eaten frozen and steamed/microwaved (peas, carrots, greens) and vegetables that I will only eat frozen and steamed (broccoli.) Try other vegetables! Try cooking your frozen vegetables in other ways! Also, try canned vegetables! Canned vegetables are often even mushier than frozen, but at least for me, 'boiled all the way to mush' is way, way better for most things than 'mushy but with weird stringy bits and foamy bits'.

Try pickles!

--Do you no longer have a way to keep food cold in your house? There are a lot of fresh vegetables that can be kept in a dark place out of direct heat for quite awhile, even if you're used to refrigerating them. Celery stuck in water stays good for over a week; unpeeled carrots much longer.

Your daughter isn't being ungrateful or having an attitude problem, she's describing an actual dietary difficulty she's having. You're lucky enough to live in a place where there are a lot of options, even if you limit yourself to fairly cheap ones. (Also unless you live in, like rural Alaska, the price of a couple servings a day of baby carrots for your daughter probably comes to less than $10 a month. Is that really something you can't swing??? Maybe cancel Netflix one month a year or something.)

I agree with everyone who says LW is seriously overcooking the vegetables. I think they may not be a very good cook if "steamed" is all they can come up with to do with a bag of frozen cauliflower. And if they smell, that's seriously overcooking them and not bothering about seasoning them with, oh, lemon juice or a dash of soy sauce or something.

It takes more attention to shop weekly specials, but at this season in the Northern Hemisphere, canned/frozen vegetables are not necessarily cheaper than fresh, and if the LW lives near more than one grocery, they can certainly manage a week's worth of some fresh vegetable for their daughter without busting the budget. Carrots at the very least are generally available in three- or five-pound bags at a good price (which also makes me question the home-ec skills of LW).

If they have nine children and all of them will grab the daughter's fresh vegetables, that's a different problem that will require them to parent instead of whine.

in certain places in the US right now, it is becoming "more vegetables than a family of 4 could consume in a week for $10" time at the farmers markets. back when i had very little money i made sure to make time for farmers markets in the season, because dang.

When I was a child, I would not eat cooked peas. I would eat them still frozen, and my parents allowed this because at least I was eating them, even if I was dripping ice-water all over my plate.

Also, I wonder if the kid is the only supertaster in the family. If so, the LW is never going to convince the girl that any of this tastes good, because the different members of the family quite literally don't taste the same.

And yeah, I get the impression that 'steamed vegetables because cheaper' is because they're eating frozen/ready to steam vegetables from the grocery. I'm pretty sure even with frozen vegetables, you can do more than steam them, even if there will be textural changes from the freezing. It sounds like LW needs to branch out their cooking.

I still eat my frozen peas still-frozen. I am 44. They're great. I'm willing to eat them cooked in things, or if served them at someone else's house, but if it's just family and we're having frozen peas for the veg, I have a little bowl of sweet crunchy cold nuggets, and they're delightful, and other people can have theirs hot with butter and salt and pepper because that's how they like them.

Flexibility makes life better. Especially in a case like this where me eating them frozen is literally zero extra work for anyone.

"nobody else in our family has a problem with it" and "she could be exaggerating" both have me, well, steaming, because so fucking what and also holy degradation batman!

Allergies can be individual, too, but more than that, taste and texture are personal. You can't shame someone into liking something they don't! I didn't magically stop hating mushrooms when my sister went vegetarian. (Bless my parents for managing suitable meals for everyone involved.)

Texture can be a huge thing. Growing up I didn't much like brussels sprouts, because my mom got them frozen and they were microwaved; they came out mushy and stinky. But oven-roasted with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar = utter crack.

She's not trying to be difficult.

nobody else in our family has a problem with it" and "she could be exaggerating" both have me, well, steaming, because so fucking what and also holy degradation batman!

Allergies can be individual, too

This mocking attempt immediately came to mind:

"My daughter claims she's allergic to the cat. Her eyes get puffy and she sneezes anytime she's near the cat, but everyone else is fine! Our daughter should be grateful we have a pet and stop being so dramatic and over reacting to our beloved family pet! Agony Aunt, what can I do to get my daughter to stop being so ungrateful?!" /s

I will bet you a day's salary that nothing the LW dislikes eating ever makes it to the family table.

Since I moved I've been doing a majority of the shopping and it's shown me how this can happen even unwittingly. My roommates love avocadoes and I didn't even think of buying avocadoes because I don't like them, until I noticed. Now I've added avocadoes to the standard shopping list, because there are people in my house who enjoy them even though I'm not one of those people.

I was eight when I realized that if my mother or father didn't like a food, we never ate it, but I had to eat food that literally made me gag. It was a revelatory moment.

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