I usually think that experts are more likely to be right than laymen. But Tyler’s blog on “expert advice” on how to make kids eat vegetables gives experts a bad name:

1. Try many times — fifteen or more — to get your kids to eat their vegetables. Most parents give up too soon.

Talk about a cure worse than the disease! Few parents have the surplus energy to nag 5 times, much less 15.

2. Bribing, punishing, and celebrating when the kid eats the vegetables are all counterproductive.

Arrant nonsense. (And isn’t nagging 15+ times per meal a truly inhuman punishment?) All my experience as a parent shows that the promise of dessert – and the threat of non-dessert – works wonders.

3. “Use tasty toppings.”

Duh. Like dessert?

4. If the kid doesn’t eat the vegetables, grab them from his plate and gobble them up yourself.

This works about 1% of the time.

5. Eat your own vegetables in great quantity and with great delight.

Again, talk about a cure worse than the disease.