Tonight, I had a mentoring session with the foster kids at the program I participate in, and our activity tonight was making healthy holiday treats. The program hired some ladies from a nutrition company to come in to discuss healthy eating habits during the Christmas season, and provided food to assemble little dishes and bites. Some of the foods they brought included Quaker Oats rice cakes, plain and red pepper hummus, cucumbers, cream cheese, grapes, strawberries, and honey ham. Two of the kids had never heard of hummus, and one of them said it looked and sounded absolutely disgusting. He initially refused to even try it, but after a little coaxing from a few of us (“don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,”) he finally gave in and put some on his rice cake. And he ended up loving it and making seconds and thirds, topping his rice cake not only with hummus, but with vegetables he normally never eats.

It was a different world to be in at the moment; I forget how picky children can be, and to see these kids completely change their minds about something like hummus in a matter of 20 minutes was such a reality check for me. These are kids who aren’t exposed to foods of different cultures, and because of that, they have very fixed views of what they like and dislike. With a little coaxing, though, they relented and found something new they all enjoyed, and I think that’s what a lot of parents fear doing in general. We cannot just give up on people who say they don’t like things, especially as growing children. We need to reintroduce to them and explain why these things are good in not just taste but also in nutrition. And maybe they don’t like the hummus with the cucumber, but they’d like it with something else like the rice cakes. These kids had never even been exposed to why vegetables are actually beneficial to them, much less a whole variety of vegetables that exist out there that they have just never seen. Habits are learned, both the good and the bad ones.