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Comment by mensetmanusman | Hacker News Reader

Our family starts dinner with salad. For young toddlers, this can be annoying to them, but they eventually get used to it, especially when they realize they don’t get the ‘yummy’ food later in the meal unless they finish their salad.

Our guests are always surprised to see the kids eating so much salad for dinner now, and our oldest recently even stopped adding dressing (8 y.o).

It seems you want to start humans young in the quest to get a good taste for vegetables, because I know many adults that just can’t stand them (didn’t have them as children).

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My parents were health nuts and we ate salads every night with dinner. We almost never ate fast food.

Vegetables taste good to me. I like the taste of salad. I can microwave a bunch of frozen veggies and actually enjoy their flavor.

I'm not trying to brag, just saying that vegetables aren't inherently "bad tasting," it's just hyper-processed foods change your palate. Kids can eat healthy.

same situation and result with me

>It seems you want to start humans young in the quest to get a good taste for vegetables, because I know many adults that just can’t stand them (didn’t have them as children).

It's just never as simple as that though. I mean, of course you are correct- push for the good foods as much as you can. And yes that certainly has a positive effect, I'm not denying that.

BUT.

I'll just say this. I have two kids, 8 & 6. My 8 year old will eat most all vegetables. He can gobble down a massive bowl of peas and corn. He loves asparagus. He will eat brussel sprouts RAW (not cooked, only raw...). Loves carrots.

My 6 year old will pretty much only eat carrots. He's been introduced to the other vegetables all the time, sees his older brother eats them. He tries them, just doesn't like them. He'll eat carrots.

10lb bags of carrots from costco are a staple in our fridge.

So, just giving a counter example of no matter what I've done with one of them, he doesn't like the taste of other veggies. They both love their fruit. And having a pull-out vegetable/fruit drawer in the fridge is an ABSOLUTE LIFE SAVER. I would recommend that to all parents. Your kids can get their own snack- in the healthy drawer!

Anyway- none of what I said means I would do anything different. Or that you should. I think what you are doing is great. But I think with this stuff there is a lot of genetics/taste preference that we are banging our head against the walls with.. and it's hard.

I'll say this, my 8 year old is basically a little clone of me.. and I also love my fruits/vegetables. Whereas the 6 year old is much more like my wife, who wouldn't just choose fruit/veggies as a snack.

Nature vs nurture is a real bitch sometimes.

It's possible that your 6yo is a supertaster.

I had plenty of vegetables as a kid. Still hate (most of) them.

Not everything is learnt.

Do you hate them objectively speaking or in comparison with other food?

I'm also interested in this as "hate" is such a strong word for food. Say, brussels sprouts aren't my favourites but I'll empty my plate of them, while celery stalks have such a strong, unpleasant taste that I'll remove them from my plate. It's hard to imagine people having this celery-level of distaste to majority of vegetables, as they are generally very mild-tasting.

There are reports that there is a genetic component to taste - especially for brussels sprouts. Oregano (cilantro) tasting like soap is another reported genetic link.

I'm the other way round from you: sprouts taste bitter, but celery is crunchy nothingness.

oregano and cilantro are completely unrelated

I believe he meant coriander (although coriander is usually the seeds of the plant)

I'm also opposite from you. I quite like celery but even the smell of brussels sprout makes me ill.

I attribute my dislike of many vegetables (b. sprout, okra, asparagus, broccoli) to how my middle- and high-school cafeterias always overcooked them into a wretched goo. I've developed a taste for some of these later in life when properly cooked but sprouts and okra are still inedible.

Yes, vegetables are always going to be among the lowest calorie dense foods, and therefore not going to taste that appealing in the face of other options. It’s no surprise then that the ones kids tend to like the most are those vegetables that are highest in density ie corn, carrot, potato, peas. So while you’re not going to teach them to like vegetables, still good to teach them their importance and that they should eat some things even though they don’t taste good

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