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Smile While Eating Your Veggies and Your Kids Might Just Eat Their Broccoli, Study Shows
Filed under: Nutrition: Health, Nutrition: Toddlers & Preschoolers, Nutrition: Big Kids, Nutrition: Tweens, Health
Want your kids to eat their veggies? Smile next time you chomp on a carrot. Credit: AP
If you want your kids to warm up to kale and carrots and not sneak their veggies under the table to the dog, smile the next time you scarf down a salad.
Mmm, mmm good is what your facial expression should convey if you want your kids to enjoy healthy foods. On the flip side, try wincing at the site of chicken nuggets and french fries to seal the deal, Reuters reports.
French researchers asked 120 adults and children ages 5 to 8 to study photos of people eating and discovered kids paid much closer attention to the facial expressions of people while they ate. Adults, on the other hand, zeroed in on body weight and were less likely to eat a food if an obese person was eating it, according to the news service. The findings were published in the journal Obesity.
Kids' food choices were influenced by their emotions, so, if they saw a happy person eating something, regardless of whether the person was thin or fat, they wanted to taste test it, too. If the person looked "disgusted," it turned the kids off, Reuters reports.
Also, if a child disliked the food, seeing a diner with a pleasant expression made the child more open to that food. But that pleasant face was more effective when the person was thin, rather than obese, leading researchers to believe that kids, too, pay attention to some of the negative stereotypes, but are less influenced by them than adults, according to the news service.
"The children's reactions were unexpected," researcher Sylvie Rousset, of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, tells Reuters in an email. "To our knowledge, no experiment has shown the influence of 'disgusted' or 'pleasant' faces on children's desire to eat."
The findings suggest parents should put on a happy face when eating healthy foods, Rousset tells the news service, adding that the results should lead researchers to examine more closely the psychological factors involve in eating.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
3-24-2011 @ 9:46PM
VW said...we started our kids out on rice cereal & then veggies instead of bananas or applesauce like most babies. Think about it...would you want to eat a bland, unsalted green bean (baby food) after tasting sweet banana? They learned to enjoy the vegetables before having the fruit, & now given a choice, they choose one of the two equally. They also aren't really keen on things that are really sweet like cake & candy.
Reply
3-24-2011 @ 5:12PM
www.icefeatherswarriorcatfansite.webs.com said...I like veggies,I daont know why people dont like them and I am a child
Reply
3-24-2011 @ 5:33PM
sunny said...Oh please...are ALL the parents of this generation total morons?
When we were told to eat our vegetables...we ATE our vegetables.
Nobody worried about SMILING at them.
Geeeeezzzzzzzz.
Reply
3-24-2011 @ 7:30PM
mp said...Yea no kidding. I never wanted to eat a food just cuz someone was smiling while they were eating it. Actually I find it disgusting to see someone with thier mouth open smiling while they have food in their mouths. All drippin down the corners of their stupid smiling mouths...
3-24-2011 @ 5:53PM
jANET said...illegal aliens anchor children are so obese they look like they are going to explode. They are disgusting to look at waddling around the schools like stupid pigs in florida.
Reply
3-24-2011 @ 6:12PM
ann weller said...Well, that's sure jumping to conclusions. Weight and what you call "anchor babies" in a hateful way don'[t necessarily go together. I see lots of very large, overweight white people everywhere I go.
And by the way, writer Simmons: It's "sight" not "site."
3-24-2011 @ 6:13PM
lol said...Sorry, I meant Sammons.
Reply
3-24-2011 @ 6:51PM
isisreptiles said...Growing up, I was sometimes reluctant to eat vegetables. My parents were big vegetable eaters and seeing them eating and enjoying vegetables was a positive influence on me.
I was never forced to eat anything I didn't like but I was required to taste everything. More often than not I found that I really did like the food. If I didn't like the food I didn't have to eat it. There are some things I never did learn to like but for the most part I am not a picky eater at all. I think forcing a child to eat something he doesn't like is more about control than nutrition and does more harm than good.
Reply