{"id":266,"date":"2022-11-29T10:56:50","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T10:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/?page_id=266"},"modified":"2022-11-29T11:27:26","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T11:27:26","slug":"blog","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veggie Tales!<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A blog post by Amber Muhinyi (29\/11\/2022)<\/h2>\n

Did you know that less than 1 in 5 children in the UK eat the recommended five portions of fruit or veg per day (NHS Digital, 2019)?<\/p>\n

Have you ever wondered about how to encourage your little one to eat more veggies?<\/p>\n

A research team at The University of Reading, led by Professor Carmel Houston Price, recently conducted a study where they looked at just that.\u00a0These researchers looked at whether picture books could be used to help introduce vegetables into toddlers\u2019 mealtimes!<\/p>\n

So what did they do?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

First, the researchers asked parents to choose one vegetable and one fruit that they wanted their toddler to eat (incidentally, which vegetable would you<\/em> choose?)<\/p>\n

Then, they toddlers into one of three groups:<\/p>\n

The first group were given a book about their chosen vegetable\u2026 The second group were given a book about their chosen fruit\u2026 and the toddlers in the third group, the control group, weren\u2019t given any book at all\u2026<\/p>\n

The researchers asked parents in the two book groups to look at the picture book with their toddler for 5 minutes every day for 2 whole weeks.<\/p>\n

And then after the two weeks of book reading with their book \u2013 either the vegetable book or the fruit book – depending on which group they were in \u2013 parents were asked to offer their toddlers the target foods every day for 2 whole weeks.<\/p>\n

Crucially, at the start of the study, the researchers asked parents how much their child liked certain foods and how much their children ate certain foods. Then they collected this same information from the parents after the 2 weeks\u2019 reading and 2 weeks\u2019 food tasting\u2026 and again 3 months later.<\/p>\n

So what did they find?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

–\u00a0 Toddlers in all of the groups \u2013 so the two book groups and the control group who had no book \u2013 all liked both of the foods \u2013 the fruit and the veg \u2013 more after the two weeks of tasting the foods\u2026<\/p>\n

–\u00a0 And, parents whose toddlers who saw the vegetable book reported that their toddlers liked the chosen vegetable MORE and ate more of it immediately after the intervention as compared to the control group who didn\u2019t see the books\u2026what\u2019s more, even 3 months later, toddlers from the vegetable book group liked and ate more of the target vegetable as compared to the control group<\/p>\n

– Another really interesting finding is that the toddlers who had the vegetable book were less fussy and less anxious about trying new foods generally!<\/p>\n

So\u2026 picture books aren\u2019t just about having fun! Looking at picture books about vegetables with your little one might actually encourage them to eat their veggies!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veggie Tales! A blog post by Amber Muhinyi (29\/11\/2022) Did you know that less than 1 in 5 children in the UK eat the recommended five portions of fruit or veg per day (NHS Digital, 2019)? Have you ever wondered about how to encourage your little one to eat more veggies? A research team at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-266","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/266\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/babylab.psychologyresearch.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}