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Is a taste of deceit with carrots so bad for kids?

Carob had its day. So did soy. Now comes the latest fad ingredient in the pantry of harried, health-conscious parents.

Deceit.

It goes by other names, of course. Stealth health. Furtive nutrition. Cookbook authors Missy Chase Lapine and Jessica Seinfeld call it “loving deception.”

Boil it all down and you’ve got the same basic recipe, one formulated to help parents get un-fried, un-sweetened, halfway-nutritious food into the mouths of children who, on principle, refuse to eat anything that looks like it grew from the ground (not that they won’t gobble up the occasional handful of dirt – but that’s another story).

If kids refuse to eat healthy stuff, why not just trick ‘em?

That, in a nutshell, is the basis of Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef and Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious, two cookbooks that detail how to hide vegetables and other healthy ingredients in foods kids actually like. Chocolate chip-chickpea cookies, anyone? How about a grilled cheese-and-flax seed sandwich?

As unappetizing as that might sound, parents are eating it up. After Seinfeld (wife of comedian Jerry) whipped up some veggie purees on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Deceptively Delicious shot to the top of bestseller lists. Lapine cried foul, claiming she’d cornered the market on loving deception six months earlier. This week (1/7/08) Lapine filed a lawsuit claiming Seinfeld stole her idea and even specific recipes.

A judge in New York’s Federal District Court will have the unenviable task of wading through the authors’ recipes for cauliflower puree. But while the food fight drags on, it’s worth pointing out that when it comes to feeding children, neither Lapine nor Seinfeld is the true and original deceiver.

My wife and I, along with about every other parent I know, have been making stuff up about what we feed our kids ever since an invisible choo choo train delivered a payload of pea-shaped coal into the mouth of our infant son. In the years since, I’ve never once had to stay up late “pureeing the night away,” as Seinfeld boasts. It’s much less labor-intensive to pawn off the daily vitamin supplement as a “candy gummy bear.” At our house, steamed asparagus spears are “green rocket ships.” I once successfully sold a plate of steamed broccoli and Parmesan cheese as “magic trees with snow.”

But my proudest lie came during a tense standoff between my two-year-old and a plate of chicken, green beans and French Fries. The fries were going fast; the meat and veggies not so much. Desperate to get some nutrition into the poor boy, I stuffed a few scraps of meat and bean into the soft part of a partially dismembered fry. Voila! Our whole family has been enjoying Trojan French Fries ever since.

Of course many may find fault with such cheap trickery. Some parents will harrumph at the suggestion that they do anything more than plop down a sensible meal and starve out the whiners. Those of a holistic bent may point out that blending vegetables into mush and serving them in cupcakes will deprive children of an honest affection for foods like zucchini, squash or kale. And ethical sticklers might suggest if parents lie about vegetables, kids may then question their credibility about more serious matters, like the tooth fairy.

To which I say: when was the last time you ate kale? I understand there may be a few adults, and even a few kids, who actually enjoy the leafiest, earthiest, most health-giving veggies. But this is America. And in my experience, even the threat of starvation will fail to move your average American child, well versed in the glories of Mountain Dew Slurpees and green apple Jolly Ranchers, to inject anything a less florescent shade of green.

The concern about dishonesty is more complicated. Parents should obviously heed their own advice when teaching children that lies are bad and should be avoided. But in diet as in all things, I firmly believe in parental privilege. Loopholes exist. I see no problem, for instance, in telling my kids that the DVD player in our family minivan only works on long drives on the freeway. I don’t see anything at all wrong with a friend briefing his son on the federal law that prohibits boys under the age of 13 from owning pocketknives. And I believe it was an act of inspiration when a mom I know told her daughter that the “Live Nude” sign near her school is in fact a French-language affirmation with a missing accent on the “e” that actually reads “live new day.”

So to those parents seeking to sneak veggies into their family dinner, I say puree away. It may be deceitful, but we parents know how raising kids can put you in some necessarily compromising positions.

I’d love to join the puree party, but I frankly I could never muster the energy for such a task, existing as I do on a diet of Jolly Ranchers and Trojan Fries.