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"I don't like it!" This mealtime complaint
will be familiar to most parents. Show my daughter a carrot or
a bean or a slice of lettuce and the response is always the same:
"Yuk!" We have tried drowning them in cheese sauce and
hiding them in pies. But no disguise seems to work. Greens do
not get a look in far as her diet is concerned.
As time goes by, I am becoming increasingly desperate
- and according to nutritionists, I am not alone. Surveys show
that many small children are fussy eaters, but while I realise
it is important not to get anxious, I also know that eating vegetables
does matter.
As Anita Baldwin of the British Nutrition Foundation
points out, it is not just that vegetables provide the essential
vitamins and minerals that do all sorts of good things; it is
also that the little girl who eats her greens today is the woman
who eats her greens tomorrow. Says Ms Baldwin: "If you can
establish healthy eating habits when children are very young,
the chances are that they'll continue to eat a healthy amount
of vegetables into adulthood." She agrees that turning mealtimes
into a battleground is not the answer. So what is?
Food supplements can go some way to make up a shortfall
of vitamins and minerals, but most nutritionists believe that
nothing beats a well balanced diet. Which is where Michael Bowdery
and a team of psychologists at the University of Wales in Bangor
come in. Bowdery and his colleagues have spent the last six years
trying to find a way of getting children
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to eat fruit and vegetables, and they have
hit on a formula that has brought astonishing results. More
than 200 children aged between two and seven were shown
a video narrating the adventures of some streetwise kids
called the Food Dudes, who are locked in combat with the
wicked General Junk and his Junk Food Junta. It is an exciting
story, with a message. It goes like this: General Junk is
trying to take over the world, and his main weapon is tricking
children into eating unhealthy food. But the Food Dudes
stuff themselves with fruit and veg to keep their "life
force" strong, enabling them to triumph over the baddies.
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At the end of the film, our heroes urge children
everywhere to |
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join the fight, and stickers and other small
rewards are offered to those who help themselves to a tray
of fruit and vegetables. And the amazing thing is that these
tactics work. "The results
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have been quite staggering," says Bowdery.
"We hadn't been |
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expecting a behaviour change that was quite
so marked."
Home-based studies of children known to be
fussy eaters saw fruit consumption rise from 4 per cent
of what was offered to 100 per cent after a video encounter
with General Junk. What is more, this improvement in eating
habits was sustained. Children at home who ate more fruit
after watching the video were still eating similarly high
levels six months later. "The point is to introduce
children to the food, and then to develop a liking for it,"
explains Bowdery. So successful have his team been that
they are now looking at making the video more widely available
in schools and nurseries.
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