Filling half of a child’s plate with fruits and veggies isn’t just recommended by the United States Dietary Guidelines, it also helps increase the amount of produce that kids end up eating, according to new research.

In a controlled feeding study, the researchers tested two strategies for encouraging kids to eat more fruits and vegetables.

The first was simply adding 50 percent more to fruit and vegetable side dishes at kids’ meals throughout the day. The second was substituting 50 percent more fruits and vegetables for an equivalent weight of the other foods. For example, if they added 50 grams of veggies to the lunch meal, they also subtracted 50 grams of mac-and-cheese.

The researchers found that adding more fruit and vegetable side dishes resulted in the kids eating 24 percent more veggies and 33 percent more fruit compared to the control menus. Substituting fruits and veggies for some of the other foods resulted in kids consuming 41 percent more veggies and 38 percent more fruit.

Barbara Rolls, Helen A. Guthrie Chair and director of the Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior at Penn State, said the findings suggest ways parents, caregivers and schools can help encourage healthy eating.

«When deciding what to feed kids, it’s easy to remember that half of the food should be fruits and vegetables,» Rolls said. «If you start seeing that you’re serving too much and have more waste, you could cut back the higher calorie-dense food while adding more produce. Experiment and have some fun trying different fruits and vegetables to see what they like and so you can serve meals with a sensitivity to their personal taste.»

The study was recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Story Source:
Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by Katie Bohn. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.