*This post by Melanie Ethridge originally appeared here on her company GrowthAdvance's website. 

“But I don’t like green beans” my three year-old recently complained to me as he eyed the healthy pile of the vegetable on his plate. “I can’t eat all those. That’s a lot,” he said.

After stifling down the nearly automatic responses rising up in me including, “but there are starving children in Africa!” and “You will clean your plate! [said in my best drill sergeant voice],” I thought to myself, “Yeah kid. I get it.” I mean we’d all rather have crackers, or, you know, Krispy Kreme, but in this household, we are going for those 9+ servings of fruits and vegetables each day and in order for the little fellow to hit the target, he was going to have to eat some green beans. Trying to pull up a little empathy from the three-year old me who had to eat all sorts of foods I didn’t love, I took a...