Catchy veggie nicknames can improve vegetable consumption in kids

Study showed that giving vegetables nicknames encourages kids to eat them...

13:44 23 September 2012

A recent study revealed that fun and catchy nicknames could encourage kids to eat their vegetables. The Cornell University study thus gives parents an idea as to how to overcome one of the hardest challenges when it comes to their looking after their kid’s diets, which is to get their kids to eat vegetables. 

 

The study, which involved 147 primary school children between 8 and 11 years old, showed that the subjects ate twice as much of the vegetables when the vegetables are given fun nicknames. 

 

The study was conducted by having the subjects taste a new lunch menu, which included carrots, over a period of three days. 

 

Although the nicknames did nothing to increase the amount of carrots that the subjects placed on their plates, they did get children to eat up to 66 per cent of the well-known orange veggie by calling them ‘X-Ray Vision Carrots’. 

 

They also learned that the type of nickname used also has an effect on children’s preferences. For example, the study showed that if the nickname is too simple such as ‘Food of the Day’, kids only consume a mere 32 per cent of the vegetables.