I recently read a quote by Ludwig von Mises that made me connect many dots: “There is no sensible distinction to be made in a restaurant between the value created by the man who cooks the food, and the value created by the man who sweeps the floor”. As Rory Sutherland puts it, “sweeps the floor” is seen here as marketing, and “cooks the food” as the product. This made me reflect on the marketing we use to help our kids eat healthily and diversely.

Veggie skewers, fruit kebabs, fruit salads or any other visual presentation is actually meant to promote nutritious food to our children. It’s all in the marketing. Kids are still quite new to textures and tastes, so we sometimes need a lil’ help to make the meals appealing to try. It took me time to understand this. I always thought that all the buzz around making the food presentable to kids is… well…buzz. I thought, if they are fussy we simply need to not give up. I was only focused on the content, and not on the package. That, luckily, has been a successful strategy until some time ago. I guess the whole appetite and taste training works well without marketing until the age of more or less two. It’s when they start saying no to everything and reject even the acquired tastes. As they grow older, children become more opinionated. They have explored the world more, they’ve seen more, questioned more and sometimes they receive influences from places we are not aware of. So, incentives are always welcome.

The French are really good at the art of presenting food because eating is seen as something both nutritious and fun. This is when marketing steps in and turns the whole eating process into art – from cooking to laying the table, to giving fancy names to the dishes on the menus – the area where I need to work more on because there’s also a huge factor at play – the culture. But about it, in another post.