Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Discover How To Get Kids To Eat Their Vegetables
HughPickens.com writes: Roberto Ferdman writes in the Washington Post that researchers at Texas A&M University, looking for patterns in food consumption among elementary school children, found an interesting quirk about when and why kids choose to eat their vegetables. After analyzing plate waste data from nearly 8,500 students, it seems there's at least one variable that tends to affect whether kids eat their broccoli, spinach or green beans more than anything: what else is on the plate. Kids are much more likely to eat their vegetable portion when it's paired with a food that isn't so delicious that it gets all the attention. For example, when chicken nuggets and burgers, the most popular items among schoolchildren, are on the menu, vegetable waste tends to rise significantly. When other less-beloved foods, like deli sliders or baked potatoes, are served, the opposite seems to happen."Our research team looked at whether there is a relationship between consumption of certain entrees and vegetables that would lead to plate waste," says Dr. Oral Capps Jr. "We found that popular entrees such as burgers and chicken nuggets, contributed to greater waste of less popular vegetables."
Traci Man, who has been studying eating habits, self-control and dieting for more than 20 years, believes that food pairings are crucial in getting kids to eat vegetables. "Normally, vegetables will lose the competition that they're in — the competition with all the other delicious food on your plate. Vegetables might not lose that battle for everyone, but they do for most of us. This strategy puts vegetables in a competition they can win, by pitting vegetables against no food at all. To do that, you just eat your vegetable first, before any of the other food is there," says Mann. "We tested it with kids in school cafeterias, where it more than quadrupled the amount of vegetables eaten. It's just about making it a little harder to make the wrong choices, and a little easier to make the right ones."
Traci Man, who has been studying eating habits, self-control and dieting for more than 20 years, believes that food pairings are crucial in getting kids to eat vegetables. "Normally, vegetables will lose the competition that they're in — the competition with all the other delicious food on your plate. Vegetables might not lose that battle for everyone, but they do for most of us. This strategy puts vegetables in a competition they can win, by pitting vegetables against no food at all. To do that, you just eat your vegetable first, before any of the other food is there," says Mann. "We tested it with kids in school cafeterias, where it more than quadrupled the amount of vegetables eaten. It's just about making it a little harder to make the wrong choices, and a little easier to make the right ones."
Eat you vegatables ... OR STARVE !!
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Well, why not just reduce the serving size of the "delicious" food on your plate? Three chicken wings + as much broccoli as you like...
Or, maybe those kids' taste buds are actually signalling them to get the nutritious food first, and eat the unimportant remainder later (or never). What's the nutritious value of broccoli, anyways? There's a reason vegetable gardens used to be wayyyy smaller than the main crops.
Maybe kids are fat because they are being served prepared foods with insane amounts of sugar (as in HFCS), while at the same time their parents are being told that their kids must not go out and play alone, for fear of the ubiquitous imagined child predator. Turn off the internet for their PS4s and put them out in the rain, they'll live (and lose weight, and eventually have fun).
The reason vegetable gardens were smaller was because either the main crop would bring more money in, or that there was limited space left over for a vegge garden. At least they used to have gardens!
Its not often nutritious food that we crave, its the hard-for-cavemen-to-obtain food that we love. Fatty, sugary, salty food is not so good for us in the quantities we eat, and that the real problem - its too readily available If we only ate small amounts, we'd be fine (he said while eating a huge cookie).
And yes, this has the same sense of igNobility about it as anecdotal studies show that if you give kids loads of sweets they won't have appetite left for dinner, no matter what it is.
There are lots of things that 'everybody knows' that are wrong. Actually studying these things, even though they're 'obvious' lets us weed out the ones that were just bad assumptions and often refine the ones that actually do have some basis in reality.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Give me a pile of veggies or a piece of chocolate cake, I know which one I'm going to want to eat first. Kids aren't any different and have less self control. If you give them an attractive bad choice, most of them are going to make that bad choice.
This is a good example. If you give me a pile of veggies or a piece of chocolate cake, but I'm expected to eat both of them, I'll definitely choose the pile of veggies first.
I didn't learn this particularly well as a child, but as an adult I'm often put in situations -- like eating at someone else's house -- where I'm served some food I don't particularly like. As an adult, my choice is generally to consume the undesirable food first, because (1) I'm hungrier, so any food will taste better, and (2) I'd prefer to end my meal with something I find pleasant.
Kids often lack the self-discipline to make such a rational choice, AND they know that most parents aren't going to force-feed them. So, they eat the good stuff first and get full enough that they've satisfied their initial hunger pangs (because vegetables often are the low-calorie portion of the meal, even if high in nutrients) -- is it any wonder they aren't going to volunteer to eat all the veggies at the end??
I also think that Americans have a particular propensity to worry too much about kids not eating regularly. We often give kids snacks a number of times each day. And at mealtimes if a kid doesn't eat much, the parents often fret at night -- "Is he okay? Did he get enough? Won't he be hungry?"
In reality, the vast majority of kids obviously have excellent survival mechanisms that won't let them starve themselves. If they eat a bit less at one meal, they'll eat more at the next. If they don't have a lot of snacks, they'll be likely to eat better at meals in general. (And they'll also be less restless and better behaved, since they'll be focused on eating and satisfying hunger, rather than running around burning off the sugar from the cookie they had an hour ago.)
Parents can easily use hunger to their advantage -- it won't get kids to eat everything, but presenting something unfamiliar to kids as a "first course" will generally make it more likely that they will eat more of it... simply because they're hungry.
A lot of it starts with the obsessive tracking of weight and height gain that doctors and midwives push onto parents these days, which makes parents unreasonably anxious about whether their child is eating enough. My eldest was tracking the lower 95th percentile for weight since he was born, and is still a skinny 10 year old despite eating adult sized portions. At first we were told we needed to feed him more, and almost ended up with social services assigned to the case, but after reviewing a food diary which showed him eating more quantity of more nutritious food than most toddlers his age, they finally left us alone.
My eldest was tracking the lower 95th percentile for weight since he was born, and is still a skinny 10 year old despite eating adult sized portions. At first we were told we needed to feed him more, and almost ended up with social services assigned to the case, but after reviewing a food diary which showed him eating more quantity of more nutritious food than most toddlers his age, they finally left us alone.
Ugh, I hate that kind of thing so much. With our oldest child (now 6), the pediatrician gave us such a hard time about him being *2 oz* below the targeted weight for this particular appointment (and the implicit threats of getting outside forces involved), that my wife started bawling in the office. I just said look, the kid just had a wet diaper five minutes ago, there's your 2 ounces, and we'll be finding a new pediatrician now.
My wife's cousin is has a PhD in health science, is in great shape, eats healthily, and is a middle school PE teacher. She won't touch what her students have to eat. It is not that the food is not healthy. It is that the combination of available ingredients, the time to prepare, and the skill level of those preparing don't often end up with things that taste on the majority good. It isn't any better to teach the "lard butts" that you've got to hate eating because you teach them that healthy food tastes like garbage.
Parents can easily use hunger to their advantage -- it won't get kids to eat everything, but presenting something unfamiliar to kids as a "first course" will generally make it more likely that they will eat more of it... simply because they're hungry.
Of all the dumb ass psycho babble crap about parenting I've read, this has to be disconnected overly simplified load of shit ever. Do you actually know how long it takes to starve a kid into submission? It's not exactly a matter of sitting there for an hour or two to win an argument. If the kid doesn't want to eat it, they are not going to eat it. They figure out pretty early on that you aren't a lunatic and that you love them too much to actually shove a funnel down their throat and force feed them. A little later on they, hopefully, realise "Hey, my Mom and Dad aren't useless sacks of trash and I get fed multiple times a day, every day, on a pretty regular basis. I can afford to skip this meal if I want to.". After those two things happen, literally the only way to introduce new food that is in anyway different looking is through siege craft. You both sit at the table with a plate of food arranged somewhere between you and them. You as a parent try in vain to tell them how good it is and that they should just try it, "Just one bite.", "You can have ice cream after you finish.", "You can stay up and watch TV." but you know full well that you're just making noise to pass the time and that this is just the start of the battle. Eventually bedtime rolls around and you either tell them to go to their room or you tell them to sleep at the table if they have to but they are not getting up until they have eaten their food, either way the result is the same. You end up wrapping the meal up in a tupperware container in preparation for the next fight. Morning rolls around and your kid asks you about breakfast. You sit down with your plate of eggs and sausage and tell them that the only thing they are getting is the dinner that they didn't eat last night. They huff and puff as expected and the stand off starts all over again. You repeat this for the next meal if you have to until they finally break down and eat what you gave them.
I literally just went through this with my kid. And do you know what the most fucked up part of it was? It was chicken alfredo, she loves chicken alfredo we just haven't had it in a while so she had forgotten. Four miserable meals later, at dinner the next day, she finally takes a bite and says "Hm, this is actually pretty good." and the plate was clean in less than five minutes. Yeah, I can tell you for a fact that anyone who has ever said "Oh, I have never thought about hurting my kids in anger!" is either a parental doormat or they are just plain lying to your face.
I know exactly what you're thinking right now because it's the same thing every new parent and DINK thinks at this point. "I bet after you do that they learn to eat what you give them.". Hahahaha, no. This isn't like setting up a new server where it's a few hours of pain and then you are done with it. This is a regularly recurring theme.