Presentation and innovation are key to kids' healthy food habits: Study

By Jess Halliday

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Children Nutrition Food

A new study on children’s willingness to eat fruit indicates that they are prepared to eat twice as much when it is visually appearing, findings that could help inform food producers’ strategies as well as parents’.

The food industry has long striven 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. But 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.

They recruited 94 children aged between 4 and 7 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.

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 ran counter to their hypothesis that sweets are attractive to children because parents often restrict them.

They did find, however, that the children were prepared to eat twice as much of the attractive fruit as they were the normal, unprepared fruit.

“Parents, schools, supermarkets and food producers should take advantage of these results and offer children fruit and vegetables that are presented in a visually appealing manner,”​ Jansen and colleagues wrote.

The children expressed awareness that the two forms of fruit would taste exactly the same. “Perhaps it was not about taste, but about fun,” ​the researchers suggest. In any case, that the visual appeal was the driver behind higher consumption was an assumption that the researchers admitted was a limitation of the study.

They also said that novelty could be a factor. “It cannot be predicted for how long a new, more (visually) appealing presentation of fruit remains interesting for children,” they wrote.

“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.”

Source

Appetite, published online ahead of print

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2010.02.012

How to promote fruit consumption in children. Visual appeal versus restriction

Esther Jansen, Sandra Mulkens, Anita Jansen

Related news

Show more

Related products

show more

 Four actionable steps to reduce allergen recalls

Four actionable steps to reduce allergen recalls

Content provided by FoodChain ID | 10-Oct-2023 | White Paper

Failing to mitigate allergen risks has serious consequences - not just for consumer safety, poor allergen procedures can also cause financial losses and...

H&F Pectin: Plant-based alternative to gelatine

H&F Pectin: Plant-based alternative to gelatine

Content provided by H&F – Innovative Solutions for your Product Developments | 12-May-2023 | Application Note

H&F Pectins are excellent as a plant-based alternative to gelatine in many applications.

Related suppliers

Follow us

Products

View more

Webinars