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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."
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.
Eat you vegatables ... OR STARVE !!
Yes, well -- the reality is that French people have known this for many years. They didn't need "scientists" to measure food pairings to figure it out.
In many French schools, it is standard practice for primary school kids to eat a 3-course lunch which takes at least 30 minutes. The kids are required to sit at table and behave effectively like well-mannered adults.
Almost all do. And almost all eat a large variety of foods.
How is this possible?
It's incredibly simple. The first course often will consist of something that kids may like a bit less, such as vegetables or a soup made with vegetables or whatever. But the kids are hungry. They generally don't have constant snacking as is common in the US.
But that's the first course -- it's all the kids have. So they either eat it, or they sit there for 10 minutes or more watching other kids eat until they are served something else. (Since the meals are served to them at table, they simply learn to wait.) Under these circumstances, guess which most HUNGRY kids will choose? They eat their vegetables.
It's not rocket science. And once kids get used to this routine, they learn to like more foods, and they'll observe older kids eating unfamiliar foods and they'll try those too. Pretty soon they just eat a wide variety of things.
I don't mean to downplay this research too much, but it's a pretty obvious thing to do. American culture of eating has tended to focus much more on efficiency in the past half century or so -- eat fast, slap everything on the plate, and be done. French culture still values the idea of lingering at the table with multiple courses, so this "research" was simply obvious to them and has been standard practice for decades.
And before you know it, they start catching anything they can find in the schoolyard to supplement their diet of vegetable soup with some protein. Snails, frogs... do we really want the children of America to start eating like the French?
I'll take a wild guess here: the French chefs pay more attention to cooking their vegetables. I've been served broccoli in the US and Germany that had just been tossed into a vat of water, and boiled until it had the consistency of mushy peas. No seasoning at all. Then I once was served broccoli in France, where it had been steamed, but didn't fall apart, it had been very lightly seasoned, and served with some Hollandaise sauce, in a separate tiny tub, so that I could just use a wee bit of it.
I'm guessing that French cooks take pride in what they do . . . even if they just work in a school cafeteria, they will cook vegetables that children and adults enjoy eating.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!