Here's another creative way of getting your kids to eat veggies. A recent feature on Science Daily says that serving greens with different dips may help children finish their vegetables.
Researchers asked 34 children from ages three to five to undergo different taste tests. The first test had kids eat carrots, cucumbers, celery, green beans, red peppers, and yellow squash, which they rated by picking one of three cartoon faces indicating “yucky,” “just okay,” and “yummy.” In the second taste test, the children were introduced to a set of dips.
The third test had the children eat both veggies and dips together. Thirty-one percent of the kids rated the veggies as "yummy" on their own, but a whopping 64 percent thought that the vegetables were good when they were served with a dip.
“Just because a child refuses to taste a vegetable doesn't mean they don't like it,” says researcher Jennifer S. Savage, associate director of the Center for Childhood Obesity Research at Penn State. “It's foreign -- the key is to try to get them to taste it in a positive light.”
(Photo by Jay del Corro via Flickr Creative Commons)
