We all know what kids’ food is, right?
Hot dogs. Mac and Cheese. Chicken Nuggets. Pizza.
Maybe, but check out this Japanese school lunch. Not a nugget in sight!
In addition to milk and rice — common favorites amongst U.S. kids — this meal contains the followiing:
Braised burdock root, vegetable fish-paste cake and miso soup with seaweed and mushrooms.
I guess there is no such thing as kids’ food.
Canadian schoolteacher Julie Furber, who works in Okinawa, Japan, and blogs as The Misadventures of MissKitty posted a whole week of school lunches. This was Thursday’s meal.
Look what gets offered for dessert! I kid you not. Fish.
I’m not suggesting you start filleting trout for a treat, but I am suggesting you reconsider your beliefs about what kids eat and enjoy.
Kids eat — and enjoy — what they’re exposed to the most!
If you start expecting your kids to like a wider variety of foods, you’ll offer a wider variety of foods, and if you do it long enough, they’ll end up eating a wider variety of foods too.
When you only expose your kids to kids’ food that’s what they prefer. It’s all a system.
Here is the rest of the one-week menu:
Monday: ¼ orange slice, milk, mackerel filet in a yuzu citrus and miso sauce, white rice and kenchinjiru (a clear soup with tofu and vegetables).
Tuesday: milk, mashed Okinawan purple sweet potato, white rice cooked with barley, oyakodon (rice bowl dish with chicken, egg, green onion and simmered in a sauce).
Wednesday: milk, almonds, banana mincemeat cutlet, nikomi udon noodles in miso sauce.
Friday: milk, tartar sauce, boiled vegetables, breaded deep-fried fish filet, hamburger bun, and pumpkin soup.
Do you think there are Japanese moms out there complaining that their kids won’t touch the hot dogs they’ve prepared?
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
