Study: Kids Eat More Veggies When They’re Hidden

Posted By elissa on Aug 4, 2011 | 2 comments

According to my IFT newsletter…

A study published The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that children consume more vegetables when the greens are pureed and secretly added to main dishes. The researchers fed prepared meals to 40 kids, age 3–5, one day a week for three weeks. The meals looked the same each day—zucchini bread at breakfast, pasta with tomato sauce at lunch, and a chicken noodle casserole at dinner and for a night snack.

One day’s worth of meals was prepared normally, with typical veggie content in each entree. On the other two days, researchers added pureed cauliflower, broccoli, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes to triple or quadruple every dish’s dose of vegetables. After each meal, researchers weighed the food to determine how much kids ate.

The researchers found that compared to the day when they ate standard meals, children almost doubled their total veggie intake on the day when they consumed high-veggie dishes. In addition, more hidden vegetables in the main dish didn’t lower the amount of other fruit and vegetable side dishes the children ate. Kids also ate about 140 fewer calories on days when their meals were most chock full of hidden veggies. Most importantly, the children seemed to like the meals with more hidden vegetables as much as the standard meals.

The study abstract is here.

So it’s official. Parents – including yours truly – have been using this trick for years, but I, for one, really couldn’t say how effective it was. But now we know.

Of course, there are some caveats:

1. You have to cook the meals. Sorry to be obvious, but it does require some extra effort when prepping meals. If you’re strapped for time and heavily reliant on restaurant/take-out/convenience foods, this little trick isn’t going to be nearly as much help.

2. You can’t let the kids see you cooking the meals (or, at least, doing the pureeing part). If they see you putting something in their food that they’ve already decided they don’t like, don’t be surprised if they turn their little noses up at it. That… and also start questioning what else you’re putting in their food when they aren’t watching.

3. It helps to have recipes, to avoid culinary disasters (here’s a resource to start with).

As you might have guessed from #2, my kids were tough customers. They’ve long since outgrown their squeamishness about veggies, so even if hiding them doesn’t work, well… it’s not the end of the world. They will still survive to adulthood, and their tastes (and capacity for reason) will broaden accordingly.