Fool the Kids into Eating More Veggies

Here’s a great way to get your kids to eat vegetables: Hide them! No kidding. Researchers served familiar foods to 39 children aged three to six, but with a catch: They modified the recipes.

The foods – zucchini bread, pasta with tomato-based sauce and chicken noodle casserole – were “enhanced” with extra vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, tomatoes and squash) in puree form. The actual weight and volume of the food was the same, but the vegetable substitutions lowered the calorie count of the foods, a nice bonus of the experiment in an age where too many children are overweight, even obese. The kids were given cartoon faces to indicate whether they thought the foods were “Yummy”, “OK” or “Yucky”, and 70% of them rated the meals containing the vegetable puree either OK or yummy. If they were given a side of steamed zucchini instead, we bet it would have been a unanimous “Yucky”! most importantly, the kids ate it.