By Mikayla van Loon
Often when it comes to cooking for fussy eaters, parents find themselves hiding vegetables in as many meals as they can.
For Upper Ferntree Gully mum Leesa Meldrum, that’s exactly what she found herself doing for her two sons Max and Benji.
“Our meals were very repetitive, we were having the same thing every week because I’d cook what they would eat. I would often cook pasta and put as many vegetables in it as I could,” Ms Meldrum said.
Cooking for a son who just didn’t like most foods and for one who had an allergy to keep in mind, Ms Meldrum was pleased to be selected in the first HelloFresh Family Favourite Awards to discover recipes that would work best for the family.
“Benji, my youngest son, he was pretty fussy, he doesn’t like a lot of things to be honest and Max has a peanut allergy. So we would have to find foods that don’t have peanuts,” she said
“So I was trying to find things that they’re both going to eat so I didn’t have to be cooking three or four meals separately each night.”
Ms Meldrum is not alone, with 71 per cent of parents in Australia having kids aged 5 to 14 who are fussy eaters.
Between 11 and 17 September the Meldrum family were supplied with meals from the food supplier to vote for their favourites.
Seeing Max and Benji try new foods they were excited to cook was a surprise to Ms Meldrum.
“They were willing to give everything a try,” she said.
Fan favourites in the Meldrum household were a chicken and sweet potato curry, the chicken parmigiana and the burgers.
Ms Meldrum said the highlight for the family was spending time together in the kitchen that made the most difference to her sons’ eating habits.
Having a little bit of extra time in lockdown to spend cooking together, Ms Meldrum said really helped the fussy eating dynamic.
“The kids really wanted to help and they were invested in cooking. They felt important and they had a say about what they were eating.
“I want them to learn how to cook and I want them to know what’s in their food and to eat healthy.”
Children refusing to eat meals is not uncommon, with 78 per cent of Victorian parents admitting their children have refused to eat dinner at some point.
Ms Meldrum’s advice for other parents struggling with fussy eaters is to get their children more involved in the nightly cooking.
“The kids felt proud of what they had done and they were more willing to eat the meals.”
