Renaming Food to Get Kids Eating Veggies

Spark a child's imagination, and you'll spark their appetite. A new study shows when vegetables are re-named, kids will eat more of them, and like it.

Friday, March 13th 2009, 5:14 pm

By: News 9


By Melissa Maynarich, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Spark a child's imagination, and you'll spark their appetite. A new study shows when vegetables are re-named, kids will eat more of them, and like it.

Considering vegetables may be the hardest thing to get your kids to eat, this could make a big difference in your home. And the process is simple; you just have to get a little creative.

Dietician Peggy Garrison is re-naming her nutritious fruits and vegetables. Instead of broccoli, she called it a dinosaur tree.

"Try another adventure, try naming it," Garrison said. "Try rewarding it, whatever you can think of to do, do that so that the child eventually buys in."

Research, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, revealed that getting creative translates into getting all your vitamins. In the study, four year olds were given regular carrots. A few days later they were given carrots again. But the orange sticks known to benefit the eyes were called "x-ray vision carrots." Kids ate nearly twice as many.

"It works in restaurants for adults so why wouldn't it work?" Garrison said. "You get flowery names. You get really exciting names. Your tastes buds are alive when you go to a restaurant."

In the days following, children continued to eat 50 percent more veggies, even without the label.

Dinosaur eggs, power peas and porcupine apple are all part of a little ingenuity that has proven to go a long way in strengthening future generations.

"They're getting their fiber, a lot of fiber, in vegetables which really helps the GI Tract, all kinds of benefits there," Garrison said. "We have a diabetes epidemic, and so that helps in the management of that."

The study was conducted in pre-schools, but researchers believe the same tricks will work at home.

Search for Healthy Recipes.

And you can get more tips from Norman Regional Hospital.

logo

Get The Daily Update!

Be among the first to get breaking news, weather, and general news updates from News 9 delivered right to your inbox!

More Like This

March 13th, 2009

March 22nd, 2024

March 14th, 2024

February 9th, 2024

Top Headlines

March 29th, 2024

March 29th, 2024

March 28th, 2024

March 28th, 2024