Society & Culture - Posted by Susan Lang-Cornell on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 17:48 - 11 Comments 
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Getting kids to eat their ‘X-ray’ carrots
In a recent study, when preschoolers were offered so-called “X-ray vision carrots,” they ate 62 percent more of the vegetable than when the vegetable was referred to as just plain old carrots. “The object of using behavioral economics in school lunch rooms is to guide choices in a way that is subtle enough that children are unaware of the mechanism,” the researchers explain.
CORNELL—A little choice and some creative titles—think “power peas”—can go a long way in getting children to eat their fruits and vegetables, research shows.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
The findings suggest school lunch programs could make better use of behavioral economics to understand how biases influence decisions.
In the study, when preschoolers were offered so-called “X-ray vision carrots,” they ate 62 percent more of the vegetable than when the vegetable was referred to as just plain old carrots, and the increased consumption of carrots persisted even the next day.
Cornell University marketing professor Brian Wansink and behavioral economist David Just report their findings in a recent issue of Choices (published by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) and outline how the results could be applied in school cafeterias at www.SmarterLunchrooms.org.
For example, instead of coercing children to eat healthier foods by substituting fruit for cookies during snack time, the researchers write, “children can be presented healthy and unhealthy items and be led to willingly choose the good.”
In school, cafeteria workers can prompt children to choose a piece of fruit, or display healthier foods at eye level or more prominently. Even such factors as noise, crowding, and long cafeteria lines may prompt children to choose more “grab and go” foods instead of healthier options, say the researchers.
“The object of using behavioral economics in school lunch rooms is to guide choices in a way that is subtle enough that children are unaware of the mechanism,” write the authors.
Cornell University news: www.news.cornell.edu/
Please wait
11 Comments
Bryan
But carrots don’t give you x-ray vision. This is no different from promising the kids $100 if they eat more carrots and then not giving them the money when they do. Lying to them may work in the short term, but when they get a little older and realize you’ve been dishonest, you’ll have lost their trust completely.
If agree you Bryan, you can only deceive kids for a while and the long term gain will then be lost. Surely it’sbest to “sex up” the health and nutritional benefits. I would say use fun and games rather than dishonesty.
World Carrot Museum
Myytkö röntgenporkkanoita? : DAILY DIEGO
[...] yliopiston tutkijat ovat todenneet, että jos porkkanoita kutsutaan X-ray-porkkanoiksi, lapset syövät niitä jopa yli 60% [...]
It’s an amazing post designed for all the web viewers; they will get advantage from it I am sure.
I am really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog.
Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself?
Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it is rare
to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.
I believe this is among the such a lot significant information for me. And i’m glad studying your article. However wanna statement on some common issues, The website style is great, the articles is truly excellent : D. Excellent activity, cheers
Hi would you mind letting me know which webhost you’re utilizing? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 completely different browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot faster then most. Can you recommend a good web hosting provider at a fair price? Thanks, I appreciate it!
I like the helpful info you provide in your articles. I will bookmark your weblog and check again here regularly. I am relatively sure I’ll be informed plenty of new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next!
New York Knicks vs Miami Heat Live Stream
Excellent issues altogether, you just gained a new reader. What might you suggest about your publish that you made a few days ago? Any positive?
hey there and thank you to your information ? I have definitely picked up something new from proper here. I did however experience several technical issues using this site, as I experienced to reload the website lots of instances prior to I may get it to load properly. I were puzzling over in case your web hosting is OK? No longer that I am complaining, however sluggish loading cases times will very frequently have an effect on your placement in google and can harm your quality ranking if advertising and marketing with Adwords. Well I’m including this RSS to my e-mail and can glance out for a lot more of your respective intriguing content. Ensure that you update this once more soon..
Before I got to the 4th paragraph I was thinking “uh yeah, it’s called marketing…”. But yeah, the way you present something obviously has an effect on how it is perceived. Any parent knows this, but good the schools may be doing this as well.