WASHINGTON -- Good news for parents who are trying to get their children to eat their vegetables: If you offer kids more fruits and vegetables before and during meals, they'll eat more of them, even if some turn up their noses at specific varieties they don't like.
These are among the findings of several studies on children's eating habits presented at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society, a group of weight-loss researchers and professionals.
The results come on the heels of a report released last week by the Institute of Medicine that recommends schools serve more fruits and vegetables to children at lunch and breakfast.
Moderately active children ages 4 to 8 are supposed to eat an average of 1 1/2 cups of fruits and 2 cups of vegetables a day, but research shows most children don't eat that much.
In several studies, researchers served preschool- and school-age children different amounts of fruits and vegetables either during a meal or before it. They found:
*The children ate more steamed broccoli with butter, raw carrot sticks, tomato soup, diced peaches and applesauce when they were offered more of those foods.
*When preschoolers were given a half cup of carrot sticks with low-fat ranch dip or 1 1/2 cups of tomato soup before a meal, they ate significantly more of them than when they were served half that much, and eating carrots or soup in advance didn't decrease the amount of cooked broccoli they ate at the meal, says Maureen Spill, a nutrition researcher at Pennsylvania State University. "Parents should offer their children some vegetables while dinner is being prepared."
*Children who liked steamed broccoli and diced peaches ate more when they were offered more, but the kids who didn't like those foods ate none of them, says Jennifer Orlet Fisher of Temple University in Philadelphia.
*When researchers increased the amount of applesauce on children's lunch trays from a half cup to a whole cup, the kids ate more applesauce and less of the pasta entree, so they increased their fruit intake but not the calories, says Tanja Kral of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
The trick is to "give kids appropriate portions of fruits and vegetables to encourage healthy eating," says Barbara Rolls, professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State.
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