by Cathy Perrins

Created on: February 15, 2009   Last Updated: September 17, 2010

How to make yucky but healthful foods more palatable

My grannie used to tell me "good thing we don't all like the same things or just think of the haggis shortage there would be". The traditional haggis is made of sheep's lungs, liver and heart mixed with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep's stomach. Purportedly, this is the national dish of Scotland, so the list of "yucky" foods is obviously not the same for everyone. In some countries fried insects are on the list of extremely desirable snacks so palates can be trained to appreciate a huge variety of things.

Depending on each healthy yet "yucky" food and each person involved getting the two to unite can be done in about as many different ways as there are combinations of people and their own interpretation of yucky foods.

One of the classic ways to merge good-for-you-but-yucky foods and folks who dislike them is to hide the yucky food in something tasty. Brussels sprouts, spinach, lima beans, beets, broccoli or some other really healthy yet "yucky" vegetable shredded and added to a rich thick soup or stew hides real well and will probably not even be noticed. Adding the same shredded vegetables to meat loaf or casseroles is another good way to hide them. One of the best ways to get folks to eat carrots is to make them into cake! Carrot cake isn't really hiding the carrots, though, that's transmogrification of "yucky" to "yummy" and is in a whole different category of getting healthy food into soon to be healthy people.

The further the "yucky" food form can be altered from its' natural state the more likely it is that it will get eaten by the folks who label think they don't like it. Wonderful healthy vegetables which are on the list of "never to be eaten" that are made into juice and spiced with a bit of salt, pepper, wasabi or Tabasco and given some sort of a new name of such as "Jungle Juice" are likely to be eagerly consumed. Especially if a large portion of the juice consists of some fruit or vegetable juice on the yummy list. Don't ever mention the "yucky" ingredients until the recipients have learned to really like the drink. Even after they have learned to enjoy the new juiced vegetables and even ask for it, sometimes once they discover that "yucky" vegetables are in whatever you've named the new elixir, they will then quit drinking it. Or they insist the recipe, which you made just to get them to eat the "yucky" ingredient, be changed to omit the one ingredient you want them to eat.

Another method

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