Texas A&M Study reveals way to get kids to eat veggies

A plate of alm cheese, alpine bacon, obazda cheese, pretzel casserole with brie, onion confit, a minced meat patty, apple horse radish and a pickel await a visitor on the first day of Street Food Thursday at the Markthalle Neun market hall in Kreuzberg district on April 11, 2013 in Berlin, Germany.

It’s an age-old parenting problem – how do you get your kids to eat their vegetables? For parents who wish to have their children take a healthier diet, there’s still a way.

Additional research from the University of Leeds has found that introducing children to vegetables as early as possible can also aid in vegetable consumption among kids.

Researchers from Texas A&M may have found an easier way to get kids to eat their vegetables than trying to convince them Spider-Manactually got his powers from green beans: Just pair veggies with other foods they don’t like that much. By contrast, when broccoli is paired with chicken nuggets or burgers, the most popular food items among schoolchildren, it is much more likely to be pushed to the side of the plate. And the opposite seems to hold true, too: favored vegetables-which tend towards the starchy, like baked potatoes-are gobbled up when entrees are less interesting.

The study highlighted a way of gauging a way that vegetables paired with certain foods can help reduce food waste.

Children favor starchy vegetables like fries and tater tots more than non-starchy ones. Leftovers were separated into different waste bags and each bag was weighed on a scale for plate-waste measurement. While serving lone vegetables isn’t a realistic lunch option for most public schools that are pressed for time and resources, it’s a lesson that can be applied at home. The tray with the sticker was weighed and recorded to calculate overall food waste.

Children generally don’t eat their vegetables, and researchers have discovered that it may not be about taste.

He says what’s also very important is we shouldn’t forget that children watch what they’re parents eat so it’s important that everyone eats together at the dinner table.

Dr. Oral Capps Jr., researcher, said in a press release, “Our study shows that optimizing entrée-vegetable pairings in schools which results in eating of vegetables more”.