A New Study Has Found An Ingenious Way To Get Kids To Eat More Veggies

We have long known the power of storytelling. It boosts imagination, teaches morals, improves memory, helps mental health, and increases our knowledge. Recent studies have also found that it can even improve your kids’ behavior and develop their empathy.

Now, we have another benefit of fairy tales and storytelling to add to the list. A recent study, which will be published in the February edition of the medical journal Appetite, has found that just 20 minutes of targeted storytelling can help kids to voluntarily eat more fruits and vegetables over an extended period of time.

Conducted by German behavioral researchers at Humboldt University of Berlin and the East African German Transdisciplinary Network, the study broke 80 4-6 year olds into two groups. One group of kindergarteners heard a 20-minute fairy tale about a town that lost all of its bright colors when its painter started eating junk food and stopped eating fruits and vegetables — and then regained its color when kids brought him healthy foods. The other group of kindergarteners heard a story of the same length unrelated to food, in which a town that lost all of its color when a painter simply ran out of colorful paint.

After hearing the fairy tale, over the next few weeks, the kids were given daily choices between eating food off of a platter filled with fruits and vegetables and a platter filled with cookies and cakes. Researchers found that 80% of the kids who heard the story about magical fruits and vegetables made healthier food choices, not just on the day of the story, but for several weeks afterward.

As you might guess, the kids who heard a story unrelated to food didn’t change their eating preferences.

“These results point to the powerful effects of fairytale-like narrations to alter food preferences in early childhood at a time when unhealthy eating is becoming a pandemic,” study author and psychologist Werner Sommer told Science Direct.

While the study was small, the significant results — and the ease and safety of the experiment — give parents a new avenue to try with picky eaters. Just sit down your kids and tell them a nice story where magical vegetables save the day. Then bring out the platter of carrots and celery.