Presenting them in an appealing manner helps

May 5, 2010 13:58 GMT  ·  By

Doctors have been going on about how fruit are good for children for many decades. They constantly tell parents to give more fruit to their children, and to encourage a taste for them in the young ones. But kids are notoriously difficult to persuade to eat fruit and vegetables alike, and so many scientists have been focusing on methods of making these products seem more appealing to the small ones. A Dutch team of investigators now proposes a new method of doing just that. They say that parents should make fruit look more flashy, if they are to catch the eyes of their children, LiveScience reports.

For the purpose of this investigation, the team looked at the fruit-eating habits of some 94 children. The test subjects were all aged between 4 and 7, and they all exhibited the same trend – if the fruit the researchers served them came in a flashy, attractive appearance, then they were twice as likely to eat it. Conversely, if the product came in a dull packaging, or if it was presented in a more run-of-the-mill fashion, they were a lot less likely to actually eat it.

The science group used a mixture of visually-appealing strawberries, grapes and apples to create two types of dishes. In the first one, the fruit were skewered, and then placed inside a watermelon, with cocktail sticks and straws. In the second one, the fruit were also skewered, but they were then placed in a simple, white plate. Both “recipes” were then presented to the children, which naturally selected the more appealing-looking one. This hints at the fact that packaging fruit in an attractive manner could help parents persuade their children in eating more of these healthy products.

“Perhaps, it was not about taste, but about fun. 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,” the researchers explain. A paper detailing their findings is published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Appetite. The team behind the investigation is based at the Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. ”In the long term, it is probably necessary for parents and food producers to remain innovative,” the group concludes.