According to research from Penn State, filling half of a child’s plate with fruits and vegetables is not only recommended by the US Dietary Guidelines, it also helps increase the amount children finish eating.
In a controlled feeding study, researchers tested two strategies to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables.
The first was to add 50 percent more fruit and vegetable side dishes to children’s meals throughout the day. The second was substituting 50 percent more fruits and vegetables for an equal weight of other foods. For example, if they add 50 grams of vegetables to lunch, they also subtract 50 grams of mac-and-cheese.
The researchers found that adding more fruit and vegetable side dishes led to children eating 24 percent more vegetables and 33 percent more fruit compared to the control menu. Children eat 41 percent more vegetables and 38 percent more fruit as a result of other foods instead of fruits and vegetables.
Barbara Rolls, Helen A. The findings suggest ways parents, caregivers and schools can help encourage healthy eating, said the Guthrie Chair and director of Penn State’s Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior.
“When deciding what to feed children, it’s easy to remember that half of the food should be fruits and vegetables,” Rolls said. “If you start to see that you’re serving too many and wasting more, you can cut back on high-calorie-dense foods as you add more produce. Experiment and try different fruits and vegetables to see what they like and So you can serve food with sensitivity to their individual tastes.”
The survey was published recently American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
According to a previous study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 60 percent of children do not eat enough fruit and 93 percent do not eat enough vegetables, suggesting a need for strategies to encourage children to eat more produce.
Since 2011, MyPlate’s dietary guidelines have encouraged people to fill half their plates with fruits and vegetables, with the hope that this will also increase people’s intake. But researchers say that despite a decade of policy, the technique has not been systematically tested in preschool children.
“For most foods, children will eat more when served in larger portions, so we wanted to test whether increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables over five days would increase intake,” said Penn State research nutritionist Leanne Rowe. “We also wondered whether substituting produce for other foods would increase intake more than adding additional fruits and vegetables.”
For the study, researchers recruited 53 children between the ages of three and five enrolled in a Pennsylvania child care center. Each participant was served all of their meals and snacks for five days at three different times in a randomized order.
For the control period, they were served the meals they would normally receive at their child care center, and during the additional strategy testing period, the portion of fruits and vegetables was increased by 50 percent. For the replacement strategy test period, fruits and vegetables were increased by 50 percent and other foods were reduced by an equal weight.
“We served the kids all their meals, snacks and drinks for five consecutive days, and weighed all the items we served, as well as the leftovers, to measure intake,” Roe said. “We sent home dinner and breakfast for the kids, but most of the meals were served at the childcare center.”
As a caveat, Rolls said that although the study was successful in getting kids to eat more fruits and vegetables, most kids still didn’t eat the recommended daily amount of vegetables for their age — about a cup and a half — even though they reached this goal for fruit.
The researchers say that in addition to the strategies in the current study, there are other things parents and caregivers can do to increase adoption.
“Serving fruits and vegetables as first courses or snacks when children are hungry can increase their intake, as can incorporating them into mixed meals,” says Rolls. “For example, you can mix some cauliflower or squash into a sauce for mac and cheese, or add fruit puree to a brownie or cake mix. You won’t diminish the flavor of the dish, but kids are eating more fruit. You should also encourage them to eat whole vegetables. Do, as well as include them with other foods.”
Christine Sanchez, Penn State; Alyssa Smethers, Monell Chemical Senses Center; And Kathleen Keller, associate professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State, also participated in the work.
The National Institutes of Health supported this research.