Strong development depends on healthy eating, but babies and children are still refusing to eat enough vegetables. Now nutrition and dietetics researchers have found some solutions.
A new paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that up to 10 or more exposures to a particular vegetable when the child is between the age of six months and five years can lead to greater chances of them liking vegetables and eating more of them.
The nutrition and dietetics researchers from the Flinders University Caring Futures Institute and Australia’s national science agency CSIRO also found that the foundations for liking veggies can even be laid before a child is born.
“It appears that the maternal diet also plays a part through exposure to vegetable flavours in-utero and increasing children’s chances of liking and eating them later, 
and the same goes for the mothers’ diet while breastfeeding,” says co-lead author Flinders University Professor Rebecca Golley, Deputy Director of the Caring Futures Institute.
Overall, the study recommended the strengthening of dietary and infant feeding guidelines to include more practical advice on the best ways to support children to learn to like and eat vegetables.
With the Australian Health Survey showing only 6% of children aged 2-17 years are eating the recommended amount of vegetables, the experts say more tailored practical advice is needed on how to offer vegetables to young children through repeated exposure and daily variety in order to increase their intake.
While the strategy of repeatedly exposing young children to vegetables to assist flavour familiarity and ultimately intake is not new science, there is a gap between evidence and dietary advice.
“There is an opportunity to improve children’s vegetable intake by including practical advice – the ‘how to’ in our recommendations to parents and caregivers,” says Professor Golley.
With food preferences established within a child’s first five years of life, she says it’s crucial to establish healthy eating behaviours early to support growth, development, and dietary habits.
“We know that a lack of vegetable consumption across the lifespan has effects on health, including an increased risk of chronic diseases, obesity and being overweight,” she says.
“That is why getting children to like a variety of vegetables such as green beans, peas, carrots and even brussels sprouts from an early age is so important.
“Early eating behaviours are impressionable and babies and young children can be supported to try different foods and to learn to like them.”
The paper, ‘Supporting strategies for enhancing vegetable liking in the early years of life: an Umbrella review of systematic reviews’, is part of the five-year VegKIT project funded by Hort Innovation and undertaken by a consortium led by CSIRO, including Flinders University and Nutrition Australia Victoria Division.
For more information: news.flinders.edu.au