Published on May 27th, 20140
New Study shows How to Make Your Child Eat Healthy Food!
Researchers from the University of Chicago found preschoolers - aged three to five - were less likely to eat foods when they were told the ingredients would make them smarter or stronger because they believed the taste would be sacrificed.
If you are told that a particular food will bring a benefit (it will be healthier, more energetic, stronger, smarter, etc. .), children are inclined to believe that this benefit will be achieved at the expense of taste, that goal will be achieved by sacrificing the taste, so it’s less likely to eat the food, consider researchers.
They recommended that both parents and food producers to simply serve the food without any message about its purpose.
To test their hypothesis, the scientists studied a group of preschool children who are reading a story about Tara, a little girl who ate Wheat Thins called (a North American brand of crackers - a sort of very thin sticks) before going to play.
There were two versions of the story: one of them contained the phrases about benefits that the food is healthy (children were told that makes strong, healthy and full of energy) and the other the version where there was no message about the benefits of that food.
The authors found that, indeed, children consumed less Wheat Thins if they had heard that version of the story containing health messages. The study results will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
The research references a previous study which found nine to 11-year-olds preferred a drink labeled ‘New Drink‘ to one called ‘New Health Drink‘.
Researchers recommended that when you want to persuade children to eat healthy food, serve it by presenting them as tasty or no characterization whatsoever.
Source: Mail Online