Pizza toppings best or most popular with children?
I promised to make pizza with and for a boy about 8, the child of friends.
He's a very selective eater.
So far, the dough and pepperoni are ok. No veg, no pineapple, tomato sauce iffy.
What toppings, in your experience are popular with young and/or picky eaters?
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Appreciate your memories, insights, suggestions.
Am going ahead with both a limited list of ingredients bought for this pizza, and a few from my regular pantry.
Hope that yes, especially per Gammy’s recommendation, having him decorating the pizza and taste-testing some ingredients will spark his interest.
The pizza meal now scheduled for later this week.
Will report back.
But yes he helped shaped the crust, decided on toppings and placed them, and monitored the baking.
I think all these activities contributed to him liking the pizza and he even had seconds! :)
But alas, no vegetables.
In doing my prep, I found two helpful web sites:
* one by a mom with fussy eater children (good recipes and tips)
https://www.myfussyeater.com/
* one about why and how children's taste buds differ from those of adults
https://www.ceenta.com/news-blog/why-do-children-and-adults-like-different-foods#:~:text=But%20a%20child's%20taste%20buds,receptive%20to%20their%20mother's%20milk.
Thanks again everyone for your tips and advice,
Nancy
With the pandemic, more now than ever is it important for younger people everywhere to start to familiarize themselves with the notion of microorganisms and their impact on human life. Like pretty much every kid in an industrialized country, he's probably had his nostrils swapped in the past couple of years at least once.
Anyhow, are you going to tell us what this particular kid actually ate?
You made good points about kids needing to learn about microorganisms- thanks (for next time).
Many people these days ask for help and never come back to say what worked. This is not specific criticism toward F52 Hotline participants or food sites in general, it happens pretty much everywhere online these days. It didn't use to be like that.
Coming back and saying what worked/didn't work gives other readers some knowledge. A lot of people only just take, take, take and never give anything back to the community. Appalling.
The biggest loss about not taking the opportunity to learn some science is that it would have given him a different perspective on it in the form of a (hopefully) fun hands-on interactive experience rather than the teacher droning on and on in front of some projected webpage or microscope photo of a Petri dish. Labs, projects and field trips were always more fun for me than lectures when I was in school. That was a long time ago and I don't know what school districts do these days to enrich book learning.
Anyhow, this kid appears to be your garden variety vegetable hater. He likes meat (pepperoni), cheese, and carbs (pizza dough), hates veggies. That actually puts him in a very, very large group of similar minded Americans so despite his fussiness, he's actually quite typical in that sense.
I hope the two of you enjoyed your kitchen experience together.
The problem here is that Nancy needs to identify what those items he'll eat are. It's not practical for her to just buy a bunch of random items with the hope that he'll like a few. If he were an open-minded eater, that would be far easier since some of the stuff he might like might already be in her fridge or pantry.
At his house, his parents have stocked their fridge and pantry with stuff he'll swallow. That's not the case if he's at Nancy's place.
That's why the wisest course of action would be for her to ask the people who are the most familiar with his food preferences: his parents.
Trying to blindly guess what he'll eat makes zero sense.
Sure, a cook at a summer camp or school cafeteria needs to understand kids' general food preferences because they're serving a large audience with different taste buds. No one can please everyone all the time; institutional cooks understand and accept this.
Nancy's situation is very different: she just needs to satisfy ONE KID in a one-off event.
This is a very similar situation.
I didn't need to know what dogs in general like to eat. I needed to know what THAT SPECIFIC dog will eat.
Nancy really needs to ask his parents if she wants a high chance of success. It's easy enough to send a quick text and his parents won't be scratching their heads for hours over the inquiry.
Thanks for the benefit of your experience and some useful ideas.
Especially liked the magic trick of the disappearing vegetables.
Yes, the task is to get them to eat and survive… and maybe even enjoy it!
As for cheese and kids, the blander the better. Don't be putting stronger flavored premium cheese on, it's often just lost on younger palates.
The more toppings you put on will multiply his likelihood of rejection. Buying some vacuum-packed bag of insipid commercial mozzarella designed for pizzas is a better choice in this scenario than something from the staffed cheese counter.
However the fundamental problem with going by most common/popular ingredients is that picky eaters frequently do not follow these trends. If you asked a hundred people on the street, it's still quite possible that this kid would shoot almost all of their favorites down.
For the greatest chance of success, your best bet would be to ask his parents about his food preferences, not random strangers on the Internet like us. His parents will know what he will swallow and what he'll spit back on his plate because his pickiness is partly their doing anyhow.
Best of luck.