by on 18/08/2020 3584
Here's a simple hack to take away the stress of persuading your child to eat her veggies.
If you hate mealtimes with your picky eater, then this article will bring you hope. A new study suggests that presenting their meals in certain ways could affect whether a child will eat the meal or not. What’s more, presentation style should differ between boys and girls for more success. Here’s what the study reveals and some more tips on how to get a child to eat when they refuse.
A new study, which was published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, shares some interesting results in relation to picky eating habits among kids: Apparently, little boys and girls of different ages have different inclinations to meals based on how they’re arranged.
The study was conducted to analyse if kids favoured their meals organised in a specific way, and if the child’s gender or age affected their choices.
Annemarie Olsen, the author of the study, knows that children tend to like their meals arranged in a specific manner and order. However, this knowledge was only based on stories from parents.
She admits that “we do not have much evidence-based knowledge about how children sort and eat their food.” Knowing whether children’s preferences are scientifically backed can be “very relevant when… we want our children to eat more vegetables – or eat their food in general,” says Olsen.
For their study, scientists recruited 100 school children who were between seven and eight years old, and 12 to 14 years old. The researchers then tasked them to order pictures of six different meals presented differently based on their liking. The meals were presented in three ways:
By ordering the photos based on how they liked the food being presented, scientists were able to distinguish which forms of food arrangement the children favoured most, and which they favoured least.
One of the key methods to help kids in eating their fruits and veggies is to organise them in small servings.
Making the food easily accessible so they can reach for it also helps.
The study suggests that there’s another key player. How the food is actually presented can influence whether the children eat or not.
“At the same time, it would be nice to know whether there are big gains to be made just by arranging food on the plate in a certain way,” added Olsen.
The results of the study showed that:
According to Olsen, these results suggest that when it comes to seven- and eight-year olds, parents should arrange their food separately on the plate.
“The child can mix the food when the various elements of the food are separated on the plate, while the reverse is not possible,” explains Annemarie.
In our previous article, we discuss five tips to on how to get a child to eat when they refuse:
References: Economic Times
This article was first published on theAsianParent.