If only brocolli tasted like biscuits...

A colleague of mine sent me this article which starts with the no-surprises statement for any parent of a toddler "given a choice between raw brocolli and a salty cracker, 18-month -old children will invariably choose the tastiest: the biscuit." Ok, so no news here. Then it goes on to explain that if an adult says "yuck" to the biscuit and "yum" to the brocolli, then the child does not, as you would hope and pray, think "that brocolli must be rockin", instead according to this research, they think "that adult must have strange taste that is different to mine." It seems these small children are cleverer than we thought. Damn! I've invested so much time in being a great role model who loves crunchy, carrot sticks and it seems that all this will have achieved is making Leo think I am a bit strange. I tried to work out how this could be used for reverse psychology - so I maybe should say that the salty biscuit is yummy? But soon realised that the whole point is that children are very smart and cannot be fooled that easily. I guess the only take away message here is that you don't want to force vegetables to compete with biscuits. We sometimes have to keep this in mind at our house when we want to have some garlic bread with pasta - the bread has to come out after most of the pasta has been eaten because just like brocolli vs biscuit, there is only one winner in the battle between buttery, hot white bread and vege-laden, wholemeal pasta!