Do your Kids Eat Tomatoes?
What is it with kids and tomatoes?
After this gourmet meal (ha! kidding!) that my husband and I cooked together, and a great time together as a family eating outside and enjoying the last days of summer, I noticed this after the dinner plates were bussed …
What’s the deal with kids picking out the tomatoes?
I will admit that it took me years to learn how to eat a tomato. I began enjoying them on hamburgers. My Mother would go to the garden and eat one warm, right off the vine. It always grossed me out. So I think it was in my 20s when my palate changed toward the flavor.
My kids love spaghetti, salsa, anything saucy, but they won’t eat a plain tomato.
Do your kids scrunch their noses at tomatoes? Or do you find them pushed to the side on the empty dinner plates?
My kids will eat them, though when I sprinkled salt on some the other day both of my boys refused them! Really…a little salt? They like them best with cucumbers.
My only kid is Josh-ha! and he loves tomatoes:)
My teen boys won’t. If they are to “chunky” looking they pick them out. My husband & I both like them and cook with them often.
I am a bad Italian, I hate raw Tomatoes. Let me explain, I’m in my 20’s, I like tomatoes with most everything when they are cooked but the watery mushy seedy middles or insides I’m a no go. maybe if someone tricks me by getting the really small ones but most likely I won’t eat them. I am just not fan of the middles when they’re sliced or insides when they’re whole. The only way I eat them raw is if the middles are cut out and there is plenty of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil, and mozzarella around.
I never realized it was common to not like raw tomatoes until later in life. I’m 30 and I just started eating a slice of tomato on a sandwich or a pizza this summer. We took a trip to Italy and I started enjoying tomatoes, and I’ve continued eating them since. I used to eat them diced up, mixed into something like pasta or guacamole, or cooked, like in a sauce, but never just a raw slice of tomato on something like a sandwich. I still couldn’t just eat a plain, raw tomato, but I’m definitely enjoying them a lot more! It’s interesting how our tastes can change with age.
Well, they haven’t always felt this way but now I have to beat them to the garden to get any ripe tomatoes. I love that they love tomatoes as much as I do, even though I wasn’t always that way!
Neither of my little ones like them cooked, but my 4 year old has eaten more fresh/raw grape tomatoes then I can count this summer!! I’ve been buying them from a farm stand and they are cheap and delicious. About a week ago my son says to me, “Mom, you can stop buying these – I’m getting a little tired of them.” Then 15 minutes later he polished off about 10 of them with his lunch!
My kid is grown, but she does (and did) eat tomatoes, but only if they were home-grown (no store variety), with plenty of salt, which is how I like them, too. I can make a meal with just fresh tomatoes.
My girls do not like plain tomatoes. My oldest will put one on a sandwich or burger (because she knows they’re good for her, but neither will eat them plain or in “whole, chopped or cut” form in a dish. They do love salsa, spaghetti sauce, and other sauces that are made from tomatoes but not right off the vine, or even in salads. I grew up eating tomatoes and loved them.
my kids will not eat tomatoes but eat all kinds of tomato products. my husband doesn’t really eat just tomatoes either…i loved them sliced and salted….
My kids will eat tomatoes cooked in anything but not raw. Get this….my son will NOT eat Ketchup…. totally dislikes it and always has… go figure, I mean what kid doesn’t eat ketchup.
My older daughter loves cherry tomatoes by the handful, but none of my girls will eat them cooked. Crazy, but they are like that with most veggies. They love them fresh, but won’t touch them if they are soft and cooked.
That’s funny, our daughter is the exact opposite. She has always liked tomatoes–epsecially the cherry ones, but picks the cooked ones out of her food.
Tyler is just 8 months and he has tried small little bites and seems to like them. I loved them as a child and still do. I could eat them like an apple (without salt). My grandma would make a mean grilled cheese and I would eat little tommy toe tomatoes with it. She couldn’t keep me away from them. I actually would sneak in the garden and eat them off the vine. She actually sent a big basket for my birthday, they are the best!
It is funny I didn’t like tomatoes until I was in my 30s. I loved ketchup and spaghetti sauce but didn’t like the texture of a tomato. I am still picky I too don’t like the pink ones they sell off season but a beautiful red one is absolutely delicious. Give them time and they will come around.
Cute picture! My children do the same…but they love things made with tomatoes…ketchup, salsa, spaghetti sauce etc. GO FIGURE!!! Happy Monday!
First, are we talking REAL tomatoes or those pinkish/reddish things they sell in grocery stores? Because I won’t eat the pinkish things that are called tomatoes. I’m absolutely sure they are NOT tomatoes. LOL
I’m noticing in the last few years kids are refusing to eat most veggies – not just tomatoes. And parents are letting them get by with it.
I’m pretty picky with my tomatoes too. I love the flavor, but sometimes it’s the consistency that gets to me. Homegrown, summer fresh tomatoes are the best!
Ironically, my kids LOVE them (they eat the little grape ones like candy) and I’m the one who doesn’t like them. Unless they’re all gussied-up as pico de gallo or bruschetta:)
yep, they eat ’em. We usually have a plate of sliced tomatoes on our table (both breakfast and dinner) throughout the summer, and we just salt and pepper them. They’re so good for you – natural cancer fighters, right?
I’m 24, married, with a baby. I love to cook, will try most anything, and don’t consider myself a picky eater. Yet I’m still trying to make myself like plain tomatoes. I really wish I did!
Something I’ve noticed in American kids: as a group, they mostly don’t cotton to really spicy foods well into their late teens. Then, somewhere along the way they are introduced, via peer pressure, to something really hot. Hot Fries, those cheese-straw-like things with Andy Capp on the bag, or maybe hot wings. Then all of a sudden, when just yesterday they couldn’t stand a shake of black pepper, out of nowhere they’re trying to out-hot each other. “What, you’re only ordering the ThermoNuclear Warfare wings? Wimp. You mean you can’t handle the 9th Circle of Hell wings? ”
Reason I bring that up is, lots of kids who don’t like tomatoes will get all into tomato-based salsas or hot sauces, which can be tomato-based.
Will have to ask my mom … pretty sure our whole family all ate tomatoes. Peas, on the other hand …
I guess it depends on your kids. I personally think they are crazy. My brothers and I have always CRAVED tomatoes. We would get in trouble (and give ourselves bellyaches) because we would sneak out to the garden and clean off one of Mamaw’s plants! (All this since before I can remember.)
My boys really, really don’t! It’s the one food I let them get away with never eating. Other things they think they won’t like but we go ahead and try them anyway. But a tomato I never press the issue on. One day they’ll see what they’ve been missing out on!
It depends what we have them with- they will eat them in breakfast burritos or tacos, sometimes in a salad, but that’s about it! :)