Good news for parents who want their kids to eat vegetables: you won't have to plagiarize beet cake recipes anymore!
In a study that, barring any nap disruptions, will be published in a couple of minutes, a NASA scientist and her lab transcriptionist have discovered a foolproof solution to getting a kid to eat food she claims not to like: have another kid who will.
The study was conducted during corn season, where corn on the cob, fresh from the farmer's truck, was presented at least twice a week to two test subjects simultaneously. In two previous surveys conducted on one subject in 2006 and 2007, the child [K1, age 4] professed an absolute dislike for corn on the cob, refusing even to taste it.
But the current study measured the effects of a second child [K2, age 7 mos at the outset of the current study] who would gnaw like a mad, toothless beaver at whatever small ear of corn was placed before her. By the second half of corn season, K1 was observed eating her corn regularly. And when surveyed, she said, she "love[s] corn more than anyone in the whole world!"
So there you go, you can't argue with science.
Man, I don't know how many times my daughter's fallen for the, "Okay, then we'll give it to your brother!" trick.
Pitting one child against the other really is the best way to get one to eat. My formerly picky eater has discovered he loves beets but assures me bacon is still disgusting.
Also, he will eat 4 ears of corn at a sitting, more than doubling his sister's 1.5-2. Good thing we have 10 acres of the stuff.
HA! None of you have met my son. I would love to see the best child experts try to get him to eat his veggies. If I did the " lets give it to sister" he would be the one handing it over. He has the skill to make the corn loving child hate corn!
I had to laugh out loud at Heather's response because I was thinking the exact same thing over here! Give the four-year-old in this house corn or any other veggie (aside from raw brocoli -- he loves that stuff) and he'd gladly dump it on his two-year-old sister's plate without so much as blinking an eye.
She'd eat it too.