Hiding Veggies In Food: Benefit Or Betrayal?

But should they? And should you resort to tricking your loved ones to eat more nutritiously?

The practice of adding a little sugar to make foul-tasting medicine go down is as well-known as the tune Mary Poppins sang to popularize it. But when it comes to food, that strategy sends the wrong message -- and risks creating an atmosphere of mistrust among children.

"Betrayed" is how registered dietitian and therapist Ellyn Satter puts it. "Kids almost always catch on eventually," notes Satter, author of "Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense" (Bull, $16.95). "Kids are smart. They'll figure it out. And when they do," she says, "they not only feel betrayed, but patronized."

And they may wonder: If mom does this, what else does she do?

Sure, adding bean paste to the tomato sauce on a pizza can be an incremental step toward better nutrition "without having the vegetables dance on the top," says David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital in Boston.

But Ludwig, author of "Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World" (Houghton Mifflin, $26), says the broader message conveyed by stealth cooking is that "vegetables have to be hidden and mixed with large amounts of fat and sugar to be edible. . . . We don't have to sneak vegetables under the rug."

The sneaky approach also may hinder the natural development of a child's taste buds. Learning to accept new foods is literally an acquired taste. Babies are born with a preference for sweet, salty and fatty flavors -- representing the prime ingredients of breast milk -- and an innate protective reflex against other tastes. Scientists believe this neophobia, or fear of strange new flavors, may help guard them against toxic substances when they are most vulnerable.

As children age, their taste buds mature. They learn to like more complex flavors (pungent, bitter, sour and spicy) if they are exposed to them. Serve food limited to the kid-friendly, basic flavors and you risk keeping their "taste preferences in their most primitive state," Ludwig says. It takes an average of 10 tries for a child to willingly accept a new food.

That's why you can find dinner-table detente if you understand the importance of offering kids a variety of foods without pressure to consume them. Even better, sit down and enjoy the meal with them.