In a food lecture from Chicago Ideas Week, a cook who goes into schools was recounting how some children didn't know what a carrot looked like. This rang familiar with Jamie Oliver's stunt in Huntington, WV, when he quizzed 1st graders on vegetables.
Back in the old days when I was a child, I did know what a carrot looked like in the grocery store. But I also had a huge advantage that perhaps kids these days don't have: I knew what carrots looked like from Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Bugs Bunny ate a lot of carrots. He didn't eat pre cut-up carrots. Bugs' carrots had the green leafy part on the end. Real carrots.
Yes, children these days can see Bugs Bunny, but in my day, the Looney Tunes cartoons were on all the time.
Okay, so I didn't know what parsley was. I didn't realize the parsley garnish on the Mr. Twist at Howard Johnson's was edible. Even when I learned it was food, I still didn't want to eat it.
Ideally, going to a farm or growing your own vegetables is the best way to teach your kid about vegetables. If not, consider a good grocery store or worse comes to worse, a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
"Th-th-th-that's all folks!"
photo source/image courtesy of Warner Bros.
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