Don’t give up on getting children to eat their greens

RESEARCHERS in a new study in the UK are urging parents not to give up on encouraging their children to eat their vegetables, suggesting three effective tactics that parents can use to boost vegetable consumption.

Led by Dr Emma Haycraft, senior lecturer in Psychology at Loughborough, the team recruited 135 families and asked parents to offer their children a raw vegetable which they didn’t like every day at snack time for two weeks.

The team also advised parents to offer children a ‘non-food’ reward in exchange for eating their vegetables, and suggested that parents eat with their children.

In addition to their own study, the team also looked at seven other studies investigating ways to get children to eat their greens.

The team found that the method of offering the vegetable repeatedly each day, and making it a part of their daily meal or snack time was the most effective in encouraging children to eat a vegetable that they previously had an aversion to.

Although it may take weeks or even months of repeatedly offering the vegetable, Haycraft noted: “Don’t give up! But don’t pressure them.”

She continued: “It might feel as if they’ll never accept vegetables, but tastes are always changing.

“We know that children’s fussy eating peaks around two years of age. And it seems that younger children may be more amenable to change their behaviour before habits become too deeply ingrained.”

The reward system was also found to be an effective way of helping children to learn to like and eat vegetables, while parents eating with children and showing their children how much they liked the vegetables also made the youngsters more willing to try them.

The results could provide important advice for parents, with many previous studies showing that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables is important for reducing a child’s caloric intake, and therefore, decreasing the risk of obesity.

“There are 40 million children under five globally, who are overweight or obese,” commented Haycraft.

“In the UK, children’s and adults’ vegetable consumption falls well below the recommended levels of five per day.” – The Independent