Many parents continue to try and instill the importance of eating right in their youngsters, and although their efforts may pay off at home, what children eat at school tends to be another story, The Huffington Post reports. However, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the way to get kids to eat right at school might be from visually showing them what's healthy.
To test this idea, researchers from the University of Minnesota studied a local elementary school with 800 students. During the study, scientists went to the school on two different days - one in February and one in May. On both occasions the kids were served the same meals. In May, kids who went through the self-serve line at school got trays that had pictures of carrots and green beans in two of the compartments to symbolize that they should go there.
Researchers wanted to see if these visual aids would encourage kids to take the vegetables offered in line over the kids in February who had no such instruction.
From the results, scientists found that the visual aids did work to get more kids to at least select the healthy foods. In February, only 6 percent of kids chose the green beans, while in May 15 percent opted to get the healthy vegetable. The same went for carrots. In February only 12 percent of students chose carrots and in May 37 percent selected them.
"The students within the situation still make their own choices about what to do, so you don't bump into all this resistance when kids might feel like they're being forced to do something," researcher Traci Mann told the Pioneer Press.
The cost of adding the photos to the tray was just $3 per 100 trays.
Aside from eating right,
healthy kids also need to exercise each day to burn off some calories and pent up energy from spending so much time indoors during school hours. According to the Let's Move! initiative, children should get in at least 60 minutes of daily activity in order to thrive. Parents can ensure their youngsters exercise at least once a day by signing them up for youth sports, taking them for bike rides or bringing them to local parks to climb
commercial playground equipment.