Children less likely to eat food if they know it is good for them

When it comes to urging children to eat healthy food, parents are better off saying nothing about the benefits than suggesting it will help them grow stronger or smarter.

According to new research by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Ayelet Fishbach, children reject nourishing food simply because they know it is good for them, and once they know that, they assume the food will not taste good.

In the paper 'If it’s Useful and You Know it, Do You Eat? Preschoolers refrain from Instrumental Food', to be published in the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, Fishbach and Michal Maimaran of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Chicago, demonstrate that telling children that food will help them achieve a goal, such as growing strong or learning to read, decreases their interest in eating the food.

The researchers completed five experiments with 270 children of pre-school age in which an experimenter read picture stories about a girl who had some food for a snack. In some stories, she was interested in the food because it was good for her, in others she was interested because the food was tasty and in some stories, there was no reason mentioned in the story for why she was interested in the food.

In each case, children ate more of a food when no reason for eating it was mentioned or when it was presented as being tasty, than they did when they thought the food was good for them.

'Our study focused on very young children, and we should keep in mind that older children might rely less on taste when making food decisions due to higher self-control,' said Fishbach. 'On the other hand, most of us know teenagers who only eat six different foods, so it could turn out that their thinking is similar to their younger counterparts.'