Unhealthy Developments

‘YESTERDAY we reported that ungrateful asylum seekers were turning their noses up at baked beans donated by Christians in Gloucester. Perhaps somebody made the mistake of telling them that this distinctive combination of beans, sugar and tomato flavouring was healthy.

”I’m ready for afters now, grandma”

This, apparently, is a fatal mistake when feeding a fussy eater. The trick, you see, is to make them believe the exact opposite.

In among the doom and gloom about Iraq, the front page of the Times optimistically tells ”How children can learn to love broccoli”. Jane Wardle of University College London believes that a few simple rules will make children like any kind of food.

The trick is to give the kiddies a taste of everything when they are small, then tell them that foie gras, caviar, champagne, fine cheeses, and prime cuts of meat are healthy. Then warn them that baked beans, off-cuts and tap water are bad for you, thus guaranteeing their allegiance to the ”cheap and cheerful” segments of the food chain. Voila – a cheap, low-maintenance kiddie.

Well, it worked for us when our parents tried it. In fact, Professor Wardle’s system is slightly different. The idea is that you get them to eat genuinely healthy food by the simple expedient of not using the ”h” word at all. The little critters fall for it every time it seems.

As the Proverbs say: give us an asylum seeker’s child for the first seven years, and after we’ve fed him beans for 2,555 days and nights, then you can do what you like with him.

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Posted: 10th, September 2002 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink