Hey there, moms! Are you sitting down? I sure do hope you're sitting down. Because when you hear about the results of this super high-tech, top-secret scientific study on kids and nutrition, heaven only knows what the shock might do to you! Truly, the way you feed your children could change forever.
Are you ready? Wait, wait -- let me set the scene for you:
Picture a team of doctors and researchers in white lab coats, Bunsen burners, beakers filled with fizzing, popping liquids of every color. (Every so often one of them starts to smoke menacingly.) There is some SERIOUS medical studying stuff going on up in here, y'all. At last, one of the scientists looks up from his microscope and shouts, "Eureka! I've found it! I've found the secret to making kids eat their vegetables!"
Can you guess?? The secret is …
Sugar!! Yes, it's true! Now we have scientific proof that dousing veggies in sugar makes children more likely to eat them all up.
You're not really all that shocked, I bet. Sorry to set you up like that, I just … DUH! Like, really?? Just a spoonful of freaking sugar makes the vegetables go down?!
More from The Stir: 13 Questionable Things We Do to Get Picky Eaters to Eat
No sh*t.
I'm really NOT oversimplifying here, either. This is exactly how the study was conducted:
Preschoolers who were served lightly sweetened vegetables (sprayed with a mist of sugar) at lunchtime ate more of the healthy foods compared to those who were served unsweetened vegetables.
Although the researchers tested other ways to mask the vegetables' bitterness, including various salts, plain sugar worked the best.
Maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps there is some sort of take-home message here: If sugar spray makes veggies more tasty to tots, maybe a sweet (but not outrageously unhealthy) sauce would do the same. It might be worth dipping a couple of stalks of broccoli in some maple syrup or applesauce to find out. Or if your kid is like that adorable fibbing boy, maybe sprinkles are the way to go?
Would you spray veggies with sugar to get your kid to eat them?
Image via Cyn74/Flickr
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Comments 52
my kids eat most veggies no problem, and i have yet to encounter a fruit they dont like. they picked up on my eating habits and i started them young. i dont think i would be putting sugar on my kids healthy foods.
I agree with schils. My DD is 2 and eats her veggies no problem...secret ingredient? Pepper! A little pepper makes her happy. Sure sometimes she doesn't want what we're having and I just tell her 'honey, this is what mamma made, so this is what we're having' and that usually ends it. What if she still makes a fuss? Then she gets nothing. Sorry, I don't run a restaurant.
She loves peas and will eat them until the cows come home. I also think people try to get kids to eat vegetables they don't like. Daughter likes beans but not broccoli? Then stop trying to force the broccoli and give the kid some beans!
Sugar isn't a miracle ingredient. My kids (well, they are grown now) ate reasonably. They had their likes and dislikes, but as soon as they were old enough to cook, I taught them how, and if they didn't like what we were having, they were free to fix something else. Whatever works, though.
honey or applesauce...or even some organic sugar sure.. why not? you can then slightly wean them off right? lol
I've never had to dress up veggies to get my children to eat them. There have been plenty of times when they requested a specific veggie for a meal. Whether or not my children are 'perfect' is beside the point.
No, I will not be coating vegetables in sugar to get them to eat more. Chances are they wouldn't eat them like that, anyway.
Hunger. Hunger gets my kids to eat their veggies. Is there something wrong with hunger? :-)
Does it work on meat? Because veggies are not my problem...but beef pork and chicken are!