'Salad bar' of vegetables helps mom get her kids to like them
Eileen Dolbeare, a Richmond, Va., blogger and mother of three, says persistence helped get her two boys to eat more vegetables and other unprocessed food.
She chronicled her 30-day experiment of eating only fresh food or things with less than five ingredients in her blog, familyfresh.blogspot.com.
Before the experiment, it took generous bribes to get her kids to eat vegetables of any stripe: "The exchange rate for eating a single blueberry was four gummy frogs. One bite and an actual swallow of broccoli, netted a heaping bowl of strawberry ice cream for our four- and six-year-old boys."
For 30 days, Dolbeare put vegetables in front of her kids in a salad bar format and asked them to choose something to taste. She didn't bribe them or punish them if they didn't eat them, just requested that they get into the spirit of her experiment and at least try something.
In the first week, her younger son, Aidan, ate a single bite of green bean and declared it "not filthy." Within two weeks, he was eating salad -- a huge leap in her world.
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Melinda Fulmer
