Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
You can hear it, right? In the recesses of your childhood memories? A parent is reminding you—nagging you even—to eat your broccoli. Or maybe it’s an auntie, a neighbor, perhaps even a lunch monitor at school. Whoever they are, they’re demanding that you swallow those bitter green poufs or else … before you can … if you want …
Pity upon our child selves, forcing the stuff down, whether we liked it or not. But really, poor broccoli. The vegetable is wrapped up in such negative connotations! Waxy and flavorless when raw, bitter and mushy when oversteamed. Think toddlers flinging florets off their high chair trays. The phrase “Eat your broccoli” is so culturally omnipresent that it’s become proxy-speak for white-knuckling your way through anything unpleasant, but important to do nonetheless. With a rep as toxic as that, it’s no surprise that as parents, we’re led to expect that putting it on a child’s plate is signing up for a fight.
But recently, as I watched my own 8-year-old scarf down a third helping of roasted broccoli at dinner one night, I began to wonder: Is this still true? Is broccoli really still enemy No.1 on the childhood dinner menu? My sense is that something has shifted in recent years, that kids’ (and maybe adults’) palates or preferences have evolved in favor of the crucifer. But what’s driving this miraculous transformation? I have an idea. First, however, it’s worth revisiting how the green-headed veg came to carry all this baggage in the first place.
We can start with the fact that broccoli has solidly landed in the “health food” camp, and to be fair, it’s earned its place. The proven health benefits of broccoli are myriad: Like other members of the brassica family, broccoli contains lutein and zeaxanthin, which support eye health. It’s dense with vitamins K, A, C, and E, B vitamins, omega 3s, iron, zinc, calcium, and folate, and magnesium, to name a few. For the athletes out there (and aren’t all young children in perpetual physical motion?), research has shown that broccoli supports quicker muscle recovery and growth. And like other cruciferous vegetables, broccoli contains sulforaphane, which has been shown to help prevent cancer.
So we can agree that broccoli is a good thing for us to eat. But of course that health-food stamp of approval evokes some particular cultural stuff: dieters, Whole Foods fanatics, fitness buffs, and earth-mother hippies who shop at musty food co-ops. These sorts of associations—shaped by and for adults—almost always amount to a death knell when it comes to appealing to kids. Maybe they can smell broccoli’s virtues on us.
The internet more or less assumes kiddos’ rejection of the stuff, brimming, as it is, with jokes, videos, singsong ditties, and memes meant to get kids to eat their broccoli. “Gotta make it fun!” quips one parent on Reddit. The idea of calling broccoli “little trees” to bulk up its appeal has been around a long time but, of course, does nothing to change its texture or taste. Ditto “creating a veggie face,” a strategy put forth by Solid Starts, a (paid) app meant to support parents in helping their young children develop healthy eating habits. Food manufacturer Land O’Frost has a list of 35 Ways to Get Your Kid to Eat Broccoli, among which is the advice to serve raw broccoli with ranch dressing, hummus, or some other dip or spread.
I, for one, am not at all convinced by this approach. It immediately calls to mind every bad workplace shindig, crappily catered wedding, or supermarket-tray Super Bowl party I’ve ever been to, only masking what a person might find abhorrent about broccoli to begin with. And most kids won’t fall for it. Just watch as they lick off the dip, then reject the veg itself. I can’t say I blame them.
In recent years, there’s been a lot written about how to “hide” vegetables so that kids won’t even know they’re eating them. The 2009 picture book Monsters Don’t Eat Broccoli, by Barbara Jean Hicks, nails this nose-turned-up kid attitude and sneaky grown-up approach right on the head: About a restaurant server who dares to put broccoli on their plates, some kids complain, “Monsters don’t eat broccoli! How could she think we do?” (Poor artichokes, greens, alfalfa sprouts, and lima beans get thrown under the bus in those pages too.) “You cannot force us monsters to eat vegetables we hate.” Then the blindfold comes off: Turns out, those monsters have happily, if unwittingly, been munching broccoli all along, and therefore so will the kids. “And WOW, are they delicious!” It’s all a little condescending and pat for my parenting (and literary) taste.
So what’s it actually like out there in the ring where grown-ups, kids, and broccoli encounter one another these days? It’s certainly true that some kids don’t like broccoli! Among the responses I got when I informally polled parents in my community were “My 2-year-old absolutely will not eat it and never has.”
In defense of this intransigent child, there’s some good scientific data that helps explain some kids’ vehement rejection of broccoli. There is, researchers in Australia found, a compound called S-methyl-L-cysteine sulfoxide in brassicas (the family that includes broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale) that can, when combined with bacteria and saliva, produce strong sulfurous smells (think rotten eggs, decomposing animals, and farts) that tend to hang around in the nose and mouth. In plain speak: spit + bacteria + cruciferous veggie = yuck! Apparently, levels of the same compound are higher in the oral bacteria of some individuals than others. With exposure over time, many adults learn to overlook, or become less sensitive to, the odors (whether or not they actually like broccoli), while kids who push the stuff to the side of their plates haven’t built up their tolerance yet.
But for all those picky kids out there, I know of far more who will not only eat it, but for whom broccoli reigns supreme within the veggie hierarchy (my twin 8-year-olds among them). But here’s the thing: How I cook the stuff matters. A lot. My kids won’t eat broccoli raw or steamed. (The latter is the way I, today a true broccoli lover, hated it most as a kid myself.)
Which pokes a bit of a hole in the Aussie findings: The researchers ran their tests only on steamed and raw broccoli. While that same casual parent poll I undertook offered proof that some kids like, and even prefer, broccoli this way—“Mine loves broccoli, but only steamed or blanched so it’s still bright green,” one parent told me—the vast majority seem to need some other preparation to find any appeal in the stuff.
Some parents told me their kids like it best sautéed with garlic, or on pizza; others, in soup made rich and creamy with cheddar cheese. But the resounding favorite among this group of kids—ranging in age from just starting on solids to on the verge of middle school—is roasted broccoli. At my house, a sheet pan of the stuff accompanies dinner at least once a week, a fact about which I’ve never heard a complaint.
Roasting brings out the vegetable’s natural sweetness and minimizes its gassy smell. I mean that scientifically: Roasting broccoli reduces methanethiol, a sulfurous compound, and increases furans—the nutty, sweet flavor compounds that make crisped-up bacon, for example, so addictive—by way of thermal degradation of ascorbic acid and carbohydrates. Back to basic English: Roasting crucifers means fewer notes of fart, and more of caramel.
I cook it in a very hot oven (450 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes) with a good glug of olive oil (to help crisp things up) and plenty of salt. I also always slice and roast the stems, which my kids love, and sometimes even prefer to the floret. (Pro tip: If you’ve got somewhat-past-its-prime grocery store broccoli, cut off the toughest part of the stalk and peel the rest of the stem to get at the tender part underneath.) If I’m feeling jazzy, sometimes I’ll grate a little lemon zest and Parmesan over the baking tray once it’s come out of the oven. That way, with broccoli too, is a household hit.
From kids’ mouths to our ears. So crank your oven and get roasting! If your fussy little eaters aren’t already on this train, I have a feeling you’ll find them transformed into broccoli fanatics in no time.
Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.
