American researchers may, at long last, have found a better way to encourage youngsters to eat those healthy but often massively little-loved vegetables.
US researcher Assistant Prof Janice Baranowski yesterday gave a public lecture at the University of Otago about the new approach, which has involved developing a new type of video game, called Kiddio-Food Fight, that can be played on a smart phone.
The idea is that busy mothers, perhaps queuing at the supermarket, can, simply by playing the game, learn more effective ways of encouraging their 3 to 5-year-olds to eat their vegetables.
Prof Baranowksi, of the Children's Nutrition Research Centre at the Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, Texas, and her husband, Prof Tom Baranowski, also of the centre, have long been involved in helping develop video games that gently but effectively encourage healthier eating.
The Baranowskis have been visiting Otago University this week as guests of the Cancer Society Social and Behavioural Research Unit, and both researchers yesterday gave public talks at the preventive and social medicine department.
The latest video game quickly addresses what has become an all-too-familiar source of drama in many households both here and in the United States.
A child, depicted in cartoon form, responds with "yuk" when faced by an on-screen vegetable which he or she has no desire to eat.
The game - usually intended to last only a few minutes- and close to being publicly released in the United States, draws on the latest medical, scientific and behavioural research, to offer constructive hints about more effective ways of encouraging vegetable eating.
The Baranowskis said some other US researchers had been sceptical about the use of video games to promote healthy eating, but many other approaches to head off the looming child obesity epidemic had not succeeded.
Prof Tom Baranowski said an earlier fun video game for children, Squire's Quest, which he had helped develop, had increased vegetable consumption by one serving a day among participants.
