Cool Names for Vegetables Gets Kids Eating More.
March 6, 2009 by Liz Lewis
Filed under A Mother's Wisdom, Boys & Girls, Children, Easy Health Tips, Food and Drink, Happy Living Tip, Health
Trying to get some kids to eat vegetables is like pulling teeth. They’ll do just about anything to avoid that green, orange, or yellow thing sitting on the plate. Hiding it doesn’t work. Somehow, they always seem to know it there.
Well, turns out there’s an easier way to get your kids to eat their greens, yellows, and oranges.
Just give them a cool name like ‘X-ray Vision Carrots’, ‘Tomato Bursts’, or ‘dinosaur broccoli trees’ and the vegetables won’t stand a chance. They’ll be goobled up quick.
That’s the finding of a new study by Cornell University researchers. They presented 186 four-year old “X-ray Vision Carrots” and found that these pre-schoolers ate nearly twice as much as they did on the lunch days when they were simply labeled as ‘carrots’.
As researcher Brian Wansick says “Cool names can make for cool foods”. And the best of this is that once the kids started eating the carrots, they continued to eat them even on days when they were no longer labelled ‘X-ray Vision Carrots’.
Such a simple idea with great results. But I think that many mothers already knew this.
But the interesting thing is that doesn’t just work on kids. Adults too have an affinity for cool food names. For example, changing the name of seafood filet to ‘Succulent Italian Seafood Filet’ on a restaurant menu resulted in sales increased by 28% and taste rating increased by 12%.
Maybe it’s all in our mind.
We aways called brocooli trees when my teenage son was little. Unfortunately it does not work on his little brother.
Happy to hear it worked once. Said it didn’t work a second time. Good luck
This is the greatest idea ever! If we could apply the same concepts to adults for the grueling things we do, then we would be in business! Words like: working or arguing all need a dynamic linguistic turnaround. Thanks Liz.
good idea..