“My regrets to the chef. I only eat white foods.”

January 8, 2014
 

Notable Stats

Snow White Spectrum (SWS) – The degree of whiteness of the food your child eats. 1 – Snow White, 2- Off-White, 3 – Tan, 4 – Beige.

Time to Rejection (TTR) – The time it takes for your toddler to reject food that you present to her as soon as she realizes it is not white or off-white in color.

Since our daughter is our third and the baby, she apparently senses that she does not have to eat anything that does not fall into a certain color range. Her diet is a steady buffet of all things white or near white in color. Oatmeal, crackers, Cheerios, milk, cheese, bread.

Scurvy is a rare affliction these days with the ability to provide Vitamin C to curb its effect; but, then again, James Lind who used clinical trials in the mid 1700s to find such a cure still had to fight for 41 years to convince the British Royal Army of his findings. The army shunned his recommendation of lemons and oranges, but eventually chose limes. Ay, limey!

So I figure it may take about 41 years to convince our daughter to eat non-white food, leaving us to rely on gummy bear vitamins to effectively “keep her alive.” I am totally sure that if a pirate from the 1600s was told he had to eat a red gummy bear to survive the war at sea, he would have walked the plank instead. Our daughter has the same nonsensical resolve.

We therefore continue her colorless eating life, plotting on how to slip vegetables into her foods. Cauliflower is white, maybe turnips? The other day I tried to slip a pea inside the spokes of a pasta wheel. She reacted like the British Royal Army did when Lind tried to give them lemons and oranges. I narrowly missed going to the stockade after she sought to remove her taste buds with her bare hands in an effort to scrape off any pea residue. Wow, one green pea did all that?

OK, so maybe that was sneaky and dishonest. Fair enough, she trusted me that I would keep her food white and safe despite being unable to realize that she is missing almost all of the food groups and 95% of the vitamins when left to her own devices. I would suspect that even surgeons would be uncomfortable if she were eating that much white food in an in-use operating room. “Look at that toddler over there,” the neurosurgeon would say to his assistant. “Her food is so white that it makes our O.R. look like we decorated it in goth.”

She does have one exception to the avalanche of white food. Bacon. Apparently the salt high that hits her toddler brain just bleaches out the red to her retina and makes it seem white.

At times I wonder what her signature recipe would be if she made a cookbook. Let me take a crack at it.

Powder White Santa’s Beard Pie
1 cup of Oatmeal
1 teaspoon of salt
1 magnum of organic whole white milk
Crushed roll of Premium Oyster crackers
1 stick of provolone string cheese
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 box of bleached penne pasta

Directions:  Cook oatmeal and pasta as directed. Take all other ingredients and put them in a giant bowl. Serve.

Would a grown-up like this concoction? Probably not. Would a snowman? Yes, he would.

Since our daughter is not a snowman, we will continue to figure out a way to get her to expand her palette. I imagine it will take time; and, since we know the drill with two-year olds, we will outwait her because she will eventually connect the dots that boycotting food she would actually like if she tasted it, is not that great an approach when hungry.

In the meantime, we will just keep thinking of how you can spray paint peas to look like little snowballs.

- Doug Glanville