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Cindy Kambeitz’s nine-year-old son, Mikey, only eats carrots, snow peas and lettuce. “It’s quite frustrating. I’ve tried everything to get a cooked veggie down his throat and now give up,” she shared with Oakville News.
On his birthday, Mikey got a chia pet (terracotta figurines used to sprout chia) and loved watching it grow. “Soon after, we brainstormed that he might actually eat a veggie he grew. Next, I bought some pea seeds that we planted and watched growing,” she continued. As a family, they started snipping off a few leaves at dinners and called it “Mikey’s salad.” And the plan is working so far!
They plan to grow some broccoli microgreens this week as a March break activity.
A mom of two boys, Cindy’s experience summarizes the frustrating journey of several parents who have tried the hardest or the most creative ways to feed their children greens! Considering what fussy-eaters kids mostly are when it comes to vegetables, this local mom gives hope to many others for a home-grown solution, in a literal sense too.
We spoke with several parents in our town and discovered that microgreens (crops grown and harvested at an immature stage) are their latest favourite and saviour!
“Microgreens are baby veggies, and their flavour is quite mild. Despite being small, they are packed with vitamins, minerals, protein and phytonutrients offering 10-40 times the nutrients as the mature counterpart,” Haley McKenna, a nutritionist and mompreneur, pointed out.
As a mom of two fussy-eating teens, she has been looking for a way to grow microgreens for her family for quite some time now because she can easily chop them up and turn them into ‘green sprinkles’ on everything, including her son’s pizza and tacos.
Once she had success growing them at home and hiding them in smoothies for his neurodivergent son, for whom green things are gross, she listened to a podcast about microgreens and learned about a course to help her grow microgreens to sell.
Oakville Microgreens, Haley’s newly-launched business, is gaining popularity among parents who don’t want to grow microgreens at home. When choosing a seller, they specifically look for freshness and speed to market because the second a vegetable is harvested, the nutrients begin to degrade. If there is any surplus from her weekly harvest, she also donates to the Kerr Street Mission.
“I was intrigued to know that microgreens that can be harvested 10-14 days after planting. These are like concentrated veggies that can be hidden into all types of meals. But I don’t have the time, so prefer ordering from local competitively priced businesses like Oakville Microgreens. We need the most nutrient-dense ‘bang for the buck’ with food prices escalating,” another local mom with three young children shared.
Haley shares that her son assists her in planting the seeds, and her daughter helps harvest the microgreens. With a highlight on including greens as part of daily lifestyle, she encourages parents to try easy green smoothies with simple recipes like blending broccoli microgreens, 1/2 a frozen ripe banana, a little plain yogurt and pineapple juice.
