There have been a couple of cookbooks on the market recently that show how to "hide" vegetables and other healthy ingredients in food. I'm not opposed to that, per se. I just made a zucchini bread where I increased the amount of zucchini and replaced most of the oil the recipe called for with no-sugar-added applesauce. I don't think it's an inherently bad thing to do. However, there was something about the idea that grated on me a bit, but I couldn't pinpoint it.

Then I read an article about yet a third cookbook, Real Food for Healthy Kids, and they pinpointed the issue for me. The author states that by serving foods like brownies with spinach puree hidden inside "we are lying to our kids and signaling, either implicitly or explicitly, that vegetables, in particular, are so yucky, they have to be hidden."

While I don't think there's anything wrong with serving up a spinach-laced brownie, it's important for parents to repeatedly introduce their kids to, well... spinach! How can we teach our kids to eat healthfully and enjoy good nutrition if the only way they get it is in disguise?

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