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Kids won't eat their vegetables? Rename them, scientists say.
In a new study, 186 four-year-olds were given regular carrots and, on other lunch days, they were given the same vegetables renamed X-ray Vision Carrots. On the latter days, they ate nearly twice as many.
This is all fine and dandy, but I am from the old school on this one.
At my table the kid eats what he is given (not that we are feeding him gruel and dirt). There is no conversation to be had till he starts buying his own food.
I am so lucky I never had to resort to tactics such as this. I started my kids on fruit and veggies right away. Never had a problem getting them to eat them. Veggie at every meal, be it salad or cooked. Fruit was never a problem either. I think my kids are going to turn into apples and carrots. LOL
Making meal time fun and imaginative is not a tactic to be ashamed of. When my kids were younger I expected them to try new foods and they did so willingly. The fact that we enjoyed family meal time and shared some silly food names only enhanced their interest. I have two great eating, adventuresome teens - and they no longer call their asparagus "drangon's tails"!
"Similar results have been found with adults. A restaurant study showed that when the Seafood Filet was changed to Succulent Italian Seafood Filet, sales increased 28 percent and taste rating increased by 12 percent. "Same food, but different expectations, and a different experience,"f
Fish is fish to me.
We use the real names for things in our home. No "wee wees" or "binkys" or whatever. We call it by the name that it is.
Now, when our started talking & mispronounced word...we didn't sit there & tell them they had to say the word the right way the first time they said it...but we don't repeat the word they say.
We do silly things with food just for fun & imagination, but just not into using cheesy names to convince them to eat.
When we made the awful mistake of getting professional pics taken last summer, they put up an awful beach background & told my then 2 1/2 yr old that he was at the beach. He looked at the photographer & asked him where the sand & water was? Thus, calling something "XRay" to my #1 would just not work...he'd know that they were carrots regardless of the name.
Thankfully, I have good eaters, so we've not had to use any tactics.
imagination works great w/ kids -- force does not.
Never had to force. It was never an issue. I put food on the table he eats it. If it is something new/or strange the had to give it a try. He either liked it or did not. No renaming or pretending it was magical or super cool.
In my day care I have a lot of fussy eaters and I might ask who wants a such and such sandwich with no response but when I ask who wants triangles or squares circles or rectangles or even a sailboat they can't get enough. The kids that are even 18 mos old know their shapes now.
BTW a sailboat is a sandwich cut into triangles with a fancy toothpick for the sails.
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