It may — or it may not — surprise you that one of the most daunting challenges I face as a parent is getting the suggested five servings of fruits and vegetables a day into my child. How do you even do that? It seems like you’d have to be following your children around constantly with bags of broccoli and baby carrots and just handing them one every five minutes or so! But a new study suggests you don’t have to do that. You can hide veggies into food you’re already making, then still serve a side of veggies, dramatically increasing your child’s intake of vegetables, and — bonus — decreasing their caloric intake. Medical News Today writes:
Preschool children consumed nearly twice as many vegetables and 11 percent fewer calories over the course of a day when researchers Penn State added pureed vegetables to the children’s favorite foods.
Maureen Spill is a post-doctoral fellow in nutritional sciences at Penn State, and the study’s lead author. She spoke with me about her findings, the controversy surrounding them, and how you can work this type of veggie sneaking into your own kids’ diets.
Please listen to our conversation here:
So give it a shot! I’m going to. It can’t hurt, right? And it may improve my diet, too.
Thanks, Maureen!
-Bonnie
My kid likes your clip art: per my 3yo, “That’s fruit, YUMMY YUMMY FRUIT!!!!”