I made a rediscovery last week: cucumbers can actually taste of something. After years of eating insipid, watery, condom-clad specimens from supermarkets, I had all but stopped buying them. That is, until my husband’s colleague gave us some from his allotment, and a childhood memory of snaffling cucumber sandwiches was suddenly reactivated. Fresh white bread, salted butter, pepper, cucumber: it’s a combination once so delicious Oscar Wilde made them a running joke in The Importance of Being Earnest.
And so to the story that children are struggling to name common vegetables, with less than a third of primary school-age children able to identify a courgette or a beetroot. This didn’t come as a surprise, really: what is there to get excited about when the taste is barely memorable? Supermarket courgettes suffer from a similar issue to cucumbers: they don’t taste of anything. Don’t even get me started on tomatoes. Many of us have become so wholly detached from our food’s origins that we are, for some reason, happy to accept this, as well as forgetting – and not passing on the knowledge – that fruit and veg comes from the trees and the earth.
And look, parenting is so bloody tiring. Most parents I know are pushed for time and money, both of which you need to produce home-cooked, healthy meals replete with organic vegetables. I don’t love the news about the slashing of pesticide limits on imported goods since Brexit, but I don’t have the mental space, cash or energy to feed my toddler completely organic food all the time. And I’m one of the lucky ones: my son is happy eating his greens so, unlike lots of parents, I don’t have to spend many painful hours trying to prevent him from getting scurvy through pleading, bribery and sneaking veg into meals.
I could be smug about my son’s love for vegetables, but I’m no fool: he could change his preferences any minute, and insist upon the beige food beloved by preschoolers up and down the country. Nurture may have played a role. When you grew up with a mother like mine – she fondly remembers me listing and counting all the vegetables I would eat as a toddler – it’s hard not to see eating your greens as an imperative. My mum was about two decades ahead on avoiding ultra-processed foods and had to tolerate people treating her like some mad hippy all through the 90s. I used to buy and make Super Noodles after school and then hide the packet in the bin the way other kids were hiding their 10-packs of cigarettes.
Everyone is a product of their upbringing. I have friends who, now they have their own children, look back on the limited, unhealthy diets that their parents gave them in horror. I’m trying to stop feeling as if I’ve failed if my son doesn’t have at least one green vegetable on his plate for every meal. Frozen peas and broccoli do a lot of heavy lifting in our house. God knows how I’d feel if he were a picky eater. Would I blame myself? Everyone else would.
Education is important. Learning to cook and cooking with your child is important. But so is having a thriving food culture around us so we can make healthy, affordable choices. Having lived in France, I was struck by how much people cared about their fruit and veg (case in point, my Parisian friend declared the most delicious apricots I’ve ever tasted “a bit acidic”). The same is true of many immigrant communities here in the UK, perhaps because good fruit and veg tastes like home.
In France, they are basically all Kramer from Seinfeld (“It’s like having a circus in your mouth!”) and it’s inbuilt from birth all through creche and school, with healthy meals provided and easy access to market produce that simply tastes better. Yes, we have greengrocers, but we also have food deserts. Happily, schools are doing their bit by teaching kids how to grow veg.
Parents whose kids don’t eat their greens should also be comforted by a new study that shows genetics play a much bigger part in picky eating than was originally thought. We also know that neurodiversity can play a part in children having ultra-restrictive diets. For all the worship of the French way of doing things, their parents are often much stricter, and that isn’t always good.
Ultimately, it’s about finding a balance between force-feeding children and encouraging them to explore, and only individual parents can make that call. How I’d love, though, for the quality of our veg to improve, and be affordable and accessible for all. In the meantime, if you can get hold of a proper cucumber, I’m telling you: it’s like having a circus in your mouth.
What’s working
Falafel. My boy loves it, but I don’t always have time to make it from scratch or go to our local takeaway kiosk (which is superlative). So I was pleased to find frozen Syrian falafel in the Mediterranean supermarket. Ready in five minutes, the ingredients list is sin-free and they’re not too spicy for my toddler.
What’s not
Newborn presents – or rather, the timing of them. After the initial flurry of cards, gifts and well wishes, two weeks in, when paternity leave ends, can often feel like a lonely time for new parents – especially for the partner still at home. That’s why the florist Bloom & Wild is encouraging customers to “delay the delivery” by sending giftsand cards late on purpose. I think it’s a lovely idea.