Trouble with veggie intake? Try offering them to toddlers for breakfast, researchers say

Researchers from Loughborough University in the UK set out to learn more about how to increase the vegetable intake of children aged between 18 months and four years of age, finding that offering carrot and cucumber alongside more traditional breakfast foods resulted in increased consumption. 

 

Working with just over 350 children from eight separate early learning sites, the researchers offered the vegetables at an “unusual” mealtime – breakfast – every day for three weeks, with children eating the vegetables 62.4 per cent of the time. 

 

The idea behind the study was to see if it was possible to influence eating behaviours in early life – before biases about which foods are deemed ‘appropriate’ to eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner are learned – and to open up another time in the day where children are offered vegetables.

 

Dr Chris McLeod led the project, working with Professors Emma Haycraft and Amanda Daley, and said that these fixed ideas about what to consume and when were potentially limiting. 

 

“From a young age we learn about which foods are appropriate to have in which contexts,” he explained.

 

“For example, a roast dinner. Most people don’t have that at breakfast time, but there’s actually no nutritional, physiological or medical reason as to why that is the case. It’s just something that we learn and that’s reinforced by parents and caregivers, peers, marketing and the general food environment.”

 

Repeated exposure to foods plays a pivotal role in developing preferences, particularly for foods with bitter tastes like vegetables often have, Professor Haycraft added.

 

“Some foods are inherently more pleasant and palatable, like chocolate cake, for example,” she said. 

 

“We don’t tend to need to encourage children or indeed adults to eat these, but foods like vegetables can often have a more bitter taste which means they’re the foods that are more commonly refused or rejected.”

 

“It’s thought to be an evolutionary hang-up from the time when our ancestors were scavenging around for food. More bitter tastes could signal poison, and so we’ve developed a wariness about eating these foods.”

 

“What this means is that often we need time to learn to like those flavours and those tastes. This is where the need for repeated exposure comes in.”

 

An additional element of the study was to capitalise on the peer factor, whereby children are more likely to try something new if they can see their peers willingly doing so. 

 

The project also encouraged some of the nurseries who took part to challenge their own biases about suitable breakfast foods.

 

For Deputy Manager Chloe Sutton, a leader at the Loughborough University campus nursery, the research was an opportunity to reflect on practice. 

 

“We’re actually looking at introducing vegetables ourselves at breakfast time,” she said, “and we’ve increased our menu of vegetables around this research as well.”

 

In an unexpected twist, the researchers themselves have begun to mix things up, with Dr McLeod now shunning cereal and opting instead for “a batch-cooked tofu curry, which I might have with some vegetables on the side as well as within the curry itself”.

 

“Once you challenge your own learned behaviours and assumptions about which foods can be eaten in which contexts, the variety of tasty but nutritious foods available for you to eat across the day expands considerably,” he said. 

 

To read the paper, visit the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity website.