Rainbow Blog

Our Family’s Rainbow Adventure

posted by: Kia

We have been able to meet some amazing rainbow eating families over the years. Connecting with families is one of the best parts of this business! If you’ve ever wondered if Eating Rainbows would actually work for your family, or if you think our Today I Ate A Rainbow kit only works for families that already eat lots of fruits and veggies…we have the perfect guest blog post for you! I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Beth (we’re both working on our picky eater issues) and her family and I was so happy that she agreed to share their Rainbow Adventure…she also happens to have one super adorable Rainbow Kid

You may have read Kia’s description of picking carrots out of carrot cake as a child, but I can beat that. I was well into my thirties, possibly my forties, before I was willing to even try carrot cake. I’m not sure what I thought it was going to taste like, but I sure didn’t want to find out.

My partner, Kristi, has never been a vegetable fan either, and went through a few green pea stand-offs with her dad as a child, so, as you can imagine, I didn’t have much incentive to put veggies on the table at our house – until recently.

The veggie-free life was actually pretty okay with us (if not our bodies) until we had a child. Our daughter Ellie is now three-and-a-half, and we’ve been concerned not just about her actual nutritional intake but the eating habits that she’s developing.

We do not believe in “forcing” kids to eat things, and it’s pretty hard to expect her to eat something that we’re not willing to eat ourselves, so at her three year well-child exam, I was pretty embarrassed to admit to her pediatrician that she was hardly eating any fruits or vegetables.

She was familiar with the concept of “eating a rainbow” from Sesame Street, and was actually very positive about fruits and vegetables in theory, but she rarely had the opportunity to actually try any herself.

I won’t be putting that on my Mother of the Year application.

I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled upon Today I Ate a Rainbow, but as soon as I saw it, I knew that Ellie would love it.

I showed her the Rainbow Kitchen videos, and she was hooked. She thinks that Hannah is the coolest thing ever, and will do – or taste – just about anything if I tell her that Hannah does it.  The Rainbow Bunch is one of her favorite bedtime stories, she likes to wear her hair in pigtails “Just like Hannah,” and she goes around singing both of the songs, and randomly reciting lines from the videos.

When I introduce Ellie to it, I figured that it would be “her thing,” because “I am not a veggie person and I never will be.”

I have always had the idea that people who make a career of promoting healthy eating are Healthy Eaters of the short that go on about how they’d much rather have a big bowl of broccoli than a chocolate bar, and I just can’t relate to that. That’s never going to be me, so why should I even bother to try?

But when I read Kia’s story about working to overcome her own aversion to fruits and veggies, in order to help her daughter, it really struck a chord with me. If she could go from “picky eater” to “The Rainbow Mom” then maybe I could try a few new things myself.

Around this time, I had a conversation with my physician about our eating habits, and admitted that many of the fruits and vegetables that Kris and I “don’t like” are probably things that we’ve not tried since childhood – if ever, and she challenged us to make a list of things that we decided as kids that we don’t like, and try one each month, or even each week.

Thus began our family’s rainbow eating adventure!

Armed with a Rainbow Chart, a couple of newly-opened adult minds, and one hero-worshipping three year old, we set out to expand our dining horizons.

Although Ellie is a little young to use her chart very accurately (she mostly likes playing with the magnets) I’m doing my best to put a “rainbow” on our plates as often as possible, and we’ve discovered several delicious fruits and vegetables that we’d never even tried before.

Most importantly, Ellie is excited about eating fruits and veggies, and enjoys trying new things, even ones that she isn’t too thrilled with when she actually tastes them.

And, amazingly, she’s usually willing to try them again and again, because “Mrs. Kia says you have to try it twenty times before you figure out that you like it!”

Of course, she wanted to make kale and eggplant chips based on the Rainbow Kitchen videos, and after a bit of experimenting and tweaking to match our personal preferences, I think I’ve got my versions of those recipes nailed down (Not-so-secret ingredient: Parmesan cheese. I’m happy to give you the recipe, but don’t ask me how to store leftovers – we never have any!) and Ellie often asks if we have the ingredients on hand, so we can make them.

She and I are enjoying “green” smoothies at least two or three times a week, and she usually has a few smoothie popsicles in between, “Just like Hannah!”

I’ve also created several “new” recipes which basically consist of tossing something of each color into an existing recipe, so that I can market it was “Rainbow ______” when I call Ellie to the dinner table.

We still have several things on our list of fruits and vegetables to give another chance, but so far we’ve liked almost everything that we’ve tried.

I’ve also changed my attitude about them, from “Oh, I can’t eat this, because I can detect a hint of (insert veggie here) in it” to “Well, (veggie) isn’t my favorite flavor in the world, but this isn’t too bad, and hey, it’s kind of good for me, so here we go!”

We have a long way to go – including removing a lot of not-so-healthy things from our diets – before I’d say that we’re eating the way we really should, but we’ve made huge steps in the right direction and for Ellie, it’s all been a wonderful adventure, thanks to Kia, Hannah and Today I Ate a Rainbow!

Beth Shupp-George is a stay-at-home mom who is trying to make some healthy changes for herself and her family, after 40-plus years of veggie-aversion and sugar addiction. Beth lives in Pennsylvania with her partner Kristi and their three-and-a-half year old daughter, Ellie, who is Hannah’s biggest fan.