More carrots and less stick gets children to eat their veg

THE best way to encourage children to eat their vegetables is to pile more on their plates, a study has revealed.

Researchers found that young people ate 68 per cent more sweetcorn and broccoli when the serving size of the vegetables was doubled.

They also discovered that seasoning the vegetables with butter and salt, a popular strategy to get kids to consume more greens, didn’t change how much they ate.

Hanim Diktas, author of the study and graduate student in nutritional sciences at Penn State University, in the US, said: “The increase we observed is equal to about one third of a serving, or 12 per cent of the daily recommended intake for young children.

“Using this strategy may be useful to parents, caregivers and teachers who are trying to encourage kids to eat the recommended amount of vegetables throughout the day.”

Previous research has shown that serving larger portions has been found to increase the amount of food children eat – called the “portion size effect”.

Children tend to eat smaller amounts

of vegetables in response to bigger portions of other foods.

For this study, the researchers were curious if increasing just the amount of vegetables while keeping the portions of other foods the same would help increase vegetable consumption in kids.

They also wanted to experiment with whether adding light butter and salt to the vegetables would increase their palatability and affect consumption.

The researchers recruited 67 children between the ages of three and five.

Dr Barbara Rolls, professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State, said: “We chose foods that were [well-liked] but also not the kids’ favourite foods.

“If you offer vegetables alongside, say, chicken nuggets you might be disappointed.

“Food pairings are something you need to be conscious of, because how the vegetables are compared to the other foods on the plate is going to affect the response to portion size.

“You need to make sure your vegetables taste pretty good compared to the other foods.”

The findings have been published in the journal