Presentation and Innovation Are Key to Kids' Healthy Food Habits: Study

Reporter: 
Foodnavigator.com

The food industry has made great strides to make food for children as appealing as possible and less healthy products might come in bright colours, unusual shapes or with a gift or toy.


With pressure to address the growing tide of obesity, as well as measures to curb marketing of unhealthy foods to kids, both parents and the food industry are keyed into ways to encourage children to eat more healthily.


The researchers behind the new study, accepted for publication in the Elsevier journal Appetite, set out to assess the impact of restriction and visual appearance on children’s willingness to eat.


The study



  • Researchers recruited 94 children aged between four and seven years from primary schools in Belgium and The Netherlands.

  • Two tasting sessions took place, both involving one platter of regular fruit and one platter of visually appealing fruit cut into shapes.

  • In the first session, the children were divided into two groups. Each group was allowed to eat from one platter but not the other.

  • In the second session, all the children were allowed to eat as much as they wanted from both platters.


Observations



  • The researchers, led by Ester Jansen of Maastricht University, were surprised to observe that previous restriction of one form of fruit did not seem to make the children eat more the next time they were allowed to. This opposed their hypothesis that sweets are attractive to children because parents often restrict them.

  • They found the children were prepared to eat twice as much of the attractive fruit as they were the normal, unprepared fruit.

  • The children expressed awareness that the two forms of fruit would taste exactly the same. The researchers suggest that perhaps it was not about taste, but about fun, as the visual appeal was the driver behind higher consumption.

  • They also suggest novelty could be a factor.


According to the article, when children are exposed to a new kind of fruit presentation for a number of times, they might lose interest in the fruit. Therefore, in the long term, it is probably necessary for parents and food producers to remain innovative.”