Want healthier children and tweens? Let them watch TV
Television can help influence tubby kids to make healthier food choices
Contrary to popular belief, television could help in trimming down tubby kids by influencing them to make healthier food choices.
A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour found that TV shows featuring healthy foods could be the key ingredient in influencing children to make healthier choices.
And the Association of Dietetics in SA (ADSA) believes that apart from the healthy child-oriented cooking shows, involving children in meal preparation with their parents could also be beneficial to them attaining good health.
Approximately 13% of SA children under five are overweight, according to the Child Gauge 2019 report by UCT’s Children’s Institute.
The latest research found that those who watched cooking shows featuring nutritious dishes were 2.7 times more likely to make a healthy food choice than those who watched a different episode of the same show featuring unhealthy food.
Researchers asked 125 10-to-12-year-olds, with parental consent, at five schools in the Netherlands to watch 10 minutes of a Dutch public TV cooking programme designed for children and then offered them a snack as a reward for taking part.
Children who watched the healthy programme were far more likely to choose one of the healthy snack options – an apple or a few pieces of cucumber – than one of the unhealthy options – a handful of chips or a handful of salted mini-pretzels.
“The findings from this study indicate cooking programmes can be a promising tool for promoting positive changes in children’s food-related preferences, attitudes and behaviours,” said lead researcher Frans Folkvord.
This study was conducted at the children’s schools, which could represent a promising alternative for children learning healthy eating behaviours.
Prior research has found youngsters are more likely to eat nutrient-rich foods, including fruits and vegetables, if they were involved in preparing the dish, but modern reliance on ready-prepared foods and a lack of modelling by parents in preparing fresh foods have led to a drop in cooking skills among kids.
The study showed that the visual prominence of healthier options in both food choice and portion size on TV cooking programmes leads young viewers to crave those healthier choices then act on those cravings.
The effect that exposure to healthier options has on children is strongly influenced by personality traits.
For example, children who don’t like new foods are less likely to show a stronger desire for healthier choices after watching a TV programme featuring healthier foods than a child who does enjoy trying new foods.
As they grow older, though, they start to feel more responsible for their eating habits and can fall back on information they learnt as children.
Researchers believe this may indicate watching programmes with healthier options can still have a positive impact on children’s behaviour, even if it is delayed by age.
ADSA spokesperson Retha Harmse said: “To date the way we tried to influence people to eat healthier (and also children, to an extent) was to provide nutritional information alone, health benefits and why it is good to choose certain foods.
“This is not very effective in promoting healthy eating behaviours.
“More recent strategies, which emphasise pleasure from eating or the preparation of food, could be more effective and efficient. However, it doesn’t have to be a cooking show necessarily.
“Research has shown that when youth are involved in the preparation of healthy foods, such as vegetables and salads, they are more likely to consume nutrient-rich foods (including fruits and vegetables) and lower intakes of sugary and fatty foods, than when they are not involved in this process themselves.
“In addition, joint cooking by parents and children has been reported to increase children’s vegetable consumption,” she said.
Harmse said that according to cue reactivity theory – a type of learned response that is observed in individuals with an addiction – food cues trigger food cravings for the primed food and subsequently lead to actual eating behaviour.
“This theory would suggest that priming children with fruit and vegetables in cooking programmes would induce the actual consumption of these foods.”
“This reminds me of TedTalks with Jamie Oliver a while back when the American children didn’t even know what a fresh tomato looks like.
“Remember that your children will eat what they know, so show and expose them to new fruits and vegetables daily in order to improve the diversity in their diet.
“Unfortunately, the other side is also true, as the depiction of unhealthy foods stimulate unhealthy eating behaviours,” said Harmse. HARMSE’S TOP TIPS:
Practice what you preach; Remember that in the good and the bad, your children learn by observing you; Involve them in cooking;
Take them along when grocery shopping to show them what different foods look like before cooking;
If they worked very hard on a certain dish, they are far too invested not to taste it;
Healthy food exposure leads to healthy eating choices;
Unhealthy food exposure leads to unhealthy eating choices.
Remember that your children will eat what they know, so show and expose them to new fruits and vegetables daily in order to improve the diversity in their diet