‘Lettuce chips’ are this mom’s ingenious way to get her kids eating salad — but some parents are not buying it
Cooking pro Kathleen Ashmore’s tried and true trick for sneaking vegetables into her children’s diet is “lettuce chips,” or cut-up pieces of romaine lettuce dipped in her homemade red pepper salad dressing.
The recipe developer turned food blogger, who boasts millions of followers across social media platforms where she regularly posts her recipes, swears that fellow parents will be “shocked” at the sheer amount of lettuce their kids will munch on if they serve this dish.
“This is how I get my kids to eat an entire head of lettuce,” she said in a viral video posted to both Instagram and TikTok, showing how she cuts up a head of lettuce into bite-sized “chips” that make it “fun” for her kids to “eat salad.”
She explained that the romaine lettuce chunks serve as a scoop for the delectable red pepper dressing, a recipe she also shared on her platforms.
“It seemed like a natural way to serve lettuce to my small children, frankly. Everything feels more fun to eat when you can use your fingers, especially for kids,” she told The Post in an email.
“Since I make lots of homemade salad dressings, I thought I’d cut the romaine lettuce up into chip sized pieces and let them scoop the dressing up. When I cleared the plate away, there wasn’t a lettuce ‘chip’ left, and yet they had refused salad with a fork in the past.”
While some thought the hack was ingenious, other parents were divided and expressed their thoughts in the comments, where Ashmore warned “the crazies” that her kids also “eat plenty of potato chips and tortilla chips too.”
“If we want to extrapolate this, we have chicken fingers which of course aren’t actually fingers, but look a bit like them, we have ice cream cake which isn’t cake at all, just ice cream in the shape of a cake,” Ashmore told The Post.
“It’s simply a fun way to think about eating. It’s not about either/or, we can eat the vegetables and the chips and it’s all good.”
While some parents praised Ashmore for her creative way to convince kids to eat their vegetables – of which they need anywhere from one to four cups per day depending on age — others found issue with her labeling of the raw lettuce as “chips,” saying their “kids would never eat this.”
“No kid is eating this,” quipped one person on Instagram.
“I don’t think anyone’s offended by the lettuce. It’s just calling it chips that sounds ridiculous,” chimed in another.
Mostly, it seemed that viewers had the most issues with the “nutritional value” of romaine lettuce, which multiple people falsely claimed contained none. While romaine lettuce has been touted as a “dieter’s dream” due to its low-calorie content, it is also chock-full of vitamins A, C and K plus folate, potassium, magnesium and calcium, per Healthline.
“I don’t understand who would get upset over this,” commented one viewer on Instagram, likening the “chip” moniker to calling broccoli “baby trees” for fun. “Aside from it being a fun way to eat lettuce, it just is a creative way to expose kids to eating veggies.”
“As long as kids eat it. You can call lettuce whatever you want,” another user agreed, calling it a “great tip.”
Although some comments can “sting,” for every person she “triggers” there are also those she inspires, said Ashmore, whose other snack hacks also include adding frozen, blended cauliflower to pancake batter and meatballs to boost her kids’ veggie intake.
“When you take risks you will trigger some and inspire others,” she told The Post. “I get messages ALL the time from tired moms who have made my recipes and used my ideas and their families are eating and feeling better for it, that’s why I share what I do. It’s always worth it.”
