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 Preschoolers who watched a short video of kids eating bell peppers
later ate more of the vegetables themselves, the researchers
reported in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
They also presented their findings this month at the annual meeting
of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in Washington, D.C.
The difference in consumption was not immediate, however. Instead, a
week after seeing the video, the children ate about 16 grams of bell
pepper (about half an ounce, or a little less than 1/8 of a cup).
Kids who hadn’t seen the video only ate about 6 g.
“The DVD segment we assembled was 7.5 minutes in length, and after
just one exposure the preschoolers increased vegetable consumption
one week later. So a brief DVD exposure . . . between children’s TV
programming, or during a transition time at daycare before snack or
meal time, (may) influence children to make healthier food choices,”
Amanda Staiano, at Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, who led the study, told Reuters Health by email.
Staiano's team randomly assigned 42 youngsters, ages three to five,
to watch either the video of other children eating bell pepper, or a
video on brushing teeth or no video at all.
The next day, those who watched the veggie video actually ate less
bell pepper than the others. But one week later, after accounting
for the amount of bell pepper that each child ate on day one, the
veggie video group’s consumption was higher and the difference was
statistically significant, the researchers found.
“This indicates that the children retained the positive experience
of watching peers eating the vegetable and were able to reproduce
that action one week later,” Staiano says.
Childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 30 years
according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And one of the CDC’s recommendations to combat the rise is to eat
more servings of vegetables.
The children in the video may serve as ambassadors for healthier
eating.
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“The kids were positively influenced by their peers through role
modeling of healthy behaviors,” says Amy Yaroch, executive director
of the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition in Omaha, Nebraska, who
was not involved in the research.
“We know from behavioral theory that role modeling is an effective
strategy to get people (including young kids) to adopt healthy
behaviors. Parents typically serve as role models, but peers can be
a very strong influence as well, especially if they are viewed as
‘cool’ by their peers,” Yaroch says.
Staiano and her team still have several questions they’d like to
investigate, including how to increase the effect and whether
repeated video exposure could convince a kid to choose a vegetable
over candy.
“Figuring out ways to make screen-time into healthy time is critical
for our young children, who are expected to have shorter lifespans
than their parents due to obesity-related diseases,” Staiano says.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1ovQepn Journal of Nutrition Education and
Behavior, online March 16, 2016.
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