Eat up: free veggie bag teaches babies to prefer fresh food

Rotterdam is the latest municipality to participate in a scheme to encourage parents to give their babies freshly prepared organic vegetables.

Some 17 municipalities, including Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague and Apeldoorn, are now giving new parents a Baby Veggie Bag (Baby Groente Tas ), including recipes, for a period of eight weeks, so babies can develop a taste for healthy food.

“We have already reached 7,000 families and issued 58,000 bags,” Floor Volker, who came up with the idea, told broadcaster NOS . “The goal is to make the baby veggie bag a free basic amenity for all new parents,” she said.

Vegetables are healthy and protect against disease but people are not eating enough of them, Volker said. “The time for children to learn to eat vegetables is when they are between four and 12 months. Anything they eat regularly at that age will be stored on their 'hard disk' and they will continue to eat those things later on in life,” she said.

Baby food in pots is not unhealthy, Volker said, and better than nothing. “But processed vegetables taste differently from fresh vegetables like broccoli, eggplant and pumpkin. There is less texture and taste and that can have an effect on the learned ability to eat the fresh varieties,” she said.

Volker said the scheme is not an anti-poverty measure. “It is meant for all new parents. The veggie bag is not aimed at telling parents what they should do. Participation is voluntary, and parents have to sign up for it themselves,” she said.

A separate danger is competition from less healthy snacks and sugary drinks when children grow up and parental influence wanes, said food expert Marije Verwijs of the center for healthy eating Nutrition Center.

“I know it's an open door, but the best start in life is to eat a varied diet,” she said. So far, the scheme has been a success, with five new municipalities signing up every year.