Wednesday, October 24, 2007

A Correlation Between Preschoolers and Cooking

While I haven't collected any specific data yet on it to run through SPSS or another similar statistics software package, there seems to be an inverse correlation between the amount of time I spend cooking food and the amount of that food that my older son who is 4 will eat. Tonight I made pasta with a tasty low-fat homemade creamy walnut sauce. This took under 10 minutes. My son ate a couple of bites. Yet, a couple of nights ago when it took a half hour to make a Shepard's pie with ground turkey and sweet potatoes, he refused to try it. I am pretty sure that if I served him food from the gas station he would snarf it down. There also seems to be a correlation between the amount of time I spend cooking a meal and the amount of food that he eats the next morning at breakfast. I don't think it requires any great scientific study to know that if you don't eat dinner you'll be extra hungry at breakfast.

4 comments:

Binky said...

Since I hardly make anything that takes more than 10-15 minutes, I cannot participate in your study. However, it is an interesting theory ;)

Fairly Odd Mother said...

LOL, that would explain why my son wouldn't even sit at the table when I served my 9-hour slow cooker beef stew last night!

Anonymous said...

It may be that if young children smell food for a long time before it is served they are satiated and therefore not hungry.

If he/she leaves the house while you cook, does the time to prepare have the same effect?

Life As I Know It said...

Ha Ha! Yes, I think this is true also.
I used to love to cook before I had kids. Sigh...