It’s Okay to Play With Food! Using Play Kitchens to Teach Good Food Habits

Posted on January 24, 2012 by bethb

By Beth

Some years ago, I found myself in the aisle of a large toy store trying to find play food to go with a toy shopping basket and the play kitchen Santa was bringing for Christmas. I was struck by how hard it was to find “real” play food instead of cookies, ice cream, pizza, hot dogs, junk food, and worst, branded fast food play sets. Just like real world groceries, I had to pay more and had far fewer options to get fruits, vegetables, meats and breads.

Recently, I read research “Familiarizing with Toy Food” by Meghan Lynch from the University of Toronto. The research centered on how play in toy kitchens shapes children’s attitudes toward food. It was done by observing YouTube videos, posted by parents, that captured real life situations in toy kitchens. She was kind enough to answer some questions for The Cleaner Plate Club on how we, as parents, can use play to help our children develop a healthy relationship to food.

INTERVIEW with MEGHAN LYNCH, Nutrition Education and Behavior Researcher, questions in bold, and her answers are below.

Your research focuses on how a child’s social environment shapes his or her attitude toward food, meaning not just what foods are provided for children to eat, but shaping how they view food.

How important is social environment to our relationship with food?

The social environments plays a paramount role in shaping children’s lifelong attitudes towards food, as early experiences are pivotal in developing children’s food preferences. Children who are introduced to healthy foods early in life have the best chance of developing healthy relationships with food. After approximately age three, children model the nutritional behaviors of those in their environments, especially their parents’ food preferences and attitudes.

What does a healthy attitude toward food look like for kids?

A healthy attitude toward food for kids is in large part shaped by their social environments, and particularly with young children, changes and develops every day. It is important to understand that children’s initial rejections of new foods do not represent innate food preferences, but transient reactions that can be changed and developed through learning and experience. To foster children’s development of healthy attitudes toward food, parents should aim to allow children to eat when they are hungry and allow children to serve themselves. Parents should see their role as offering a variety of healthy foods, overseeing planning and assembly of meals, and setting schedule for meals and snacks, but they should not try to control the amount of food the child eats.

Can a parent give their child healthy foods to eat, but still role model an unhealthy social environment? How?

Yes, parents can feed their children healthy foods but still model unhealthy eating behaviours. Children learn primarily through observational learning, especially their parents’ attitudes and behaviours. Being a positive parental role model – that is, eating a variety of healthy foods and showing a willingness to try new foods –  is as important as providing children with healthy foods.

When you observed parents and children at play in the toy kitchens or with toy food, what types of behaviors would you say encouraged a healthy food attitude?

In the play settings, many parents could be seen encouraging their children to prepare and serve to the parent healthy foods such as green tea, soup, vegetables. Parents could also be seen encouraging healthy food preferences by pretending to consume the healthy foods and commenting on how delicious these foods looked or tasted.  These kinds of interactions are important, as they provide children with role models of people who enjoy healthy foods.

What types of behaviors would you advise against if parents want their kids to learn good food habits?

Whether in a play setting or real life, encouraging and modeling unhealthy food preferences and methods of food preparation are behaviours that are not helpful for developing healthy food habits in children. For example, voicing preferences for foods such as desserts or encouraging frying as a method of food preparation. Additionally, as described earlier, attempting to control over what, when, and how much children eat does not help children to learn to listen to their internal cues for hunger and satiety.

How important are the types of foods selected for a child to play with in shaping attitudes toward food? Can play scenarios help a child “rehearse” good food behaviors, or help counter picky eating behaviors?

Just why it is important to provide children with healthy toy foods to play with relates to the concept of “food familiarity.” Food familiarity refers to children’s preference for foods with which they are accustomed to seeing on a regular basis – the more familiar the food, the more likely the child will be to taste it. Importantly, children’s food preferences can be encouraged through their merely seeing these foods on a regular basis, and that repeated exposure to foods can overcome the initial refusal of them. It should follow, then, that one of the most important ways parents can encourage the development of healthy food preferences is by increasing children’s familiarity with new foods.

Thus, toy foods and play settings represent a way for parents to familiarize young children with healthy foods and act out healthy food behaviours. In the safety of play settings, parents can familiarize children with new foods and behaviours by teaching children how to chop vegetables, stir pots of food, and correctly use the oven or stovetop. In play settings, children in the higher age range (approximately five-to-six years of age) have been observed demonstrating behaviours that are the most representative of realistic food-preparation skills, such as setting the oven to a specific heat, covering foods before inserting them in the oven, and using pot-holders to remove dishes. Yet even with children in the younger age range (approximately three years of age), they can be seen acting out realistic food-preparation skills in their correct usage of utensils such as spatulas and whisks, in chopping and washing vegetables in the sink before cooking, and in stirring spoons in pots on stovetops.

How closely do children’s food play behaviors mirror their parents’ daily food behaviors?

Children have been found to treat their play with toy foods realistically, by acting out behaviours they have observed from others. Many children were realistically cautious in their pretend cooking, such as the young girl who washed and dried her hands before she began cooking. In my study, parents, too, were found to encourage use of the play-based setting as a venue for practicing realistic behaviours. In the majority of play settings, parents encouraged the washing of dishes and fruits and vegetables before cooking, as well as cautioned children about “hot” food and other dangers. In one instance, when a young girl’s father asked if she liked soda and the girl claimed she did, her father commented how her mother was the only family member who liked soda. The manner in which such play nutritional preferences were being influenced by the children’s real social influences could be seen most graphically in one play kitchen where a boy was making a pizza in a toy oven when his mother commented that it was “just like our pizza,” and the camera panned to the father preparing a pizza in the family’s kitchen.

Overall, how healthy were the majority of food behaviors presented in the videos? What types of trends did you see?

Unfortunately, many children were seen interacting with toy foods that more closely reflect typical Western diets of high-fat and energy-dense foods. The most common toy foods in the videos were nutrient-poor foods, such as cookies, fries, onion rings, and ice-cream. Children’s choices in food preparation in the play settings were dominated by behaviours reflective of family food-practices that are, unfortunately, detrimental to healthy nutritional development, such as reliance on easy-to-prepare foods. Interestingly, the microwave was the children’s most popular method for preparing food. Worth noting, too, was that in the majority of these cases, parents either did not respond (suggesting they were not surprised by their children’s knowledge and use of the microwave) or actually encouraged their children to use the appliance.

What types of foods were most often “consumed” in the play settings?

Foods consumed most often were what would be considered “extras” or “treats,” such as cookies, cakes, cupcakes, chocolates, brownies, and ice cream, coffee, sugar, salt, butter, and fast food (fries, onion rings, soft drinks, milkshakes). Cookies were a particularly popular choice for children to bake, eat, or serve to their parents. Parents, too, typically vocalized their preference for desserts and frequently encouraged their children to pretend to prepare, drink, or serve coffee. Additionally, nutrient-poor items from other food groups–hamburgers, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and pizza–were represented far more often than choices of greater nutritional value. Worth noting is that these interactions were limited of course by the toy foods present, yet very few replicas of grains and dairy could be seen. As stated, children were limited by the toy foods provided by parents, who themselves were limited by the toy foods available for purchase.

When I was shopping for my own child’s toy kitchen and toy food, I was overwhelmed by the amount of branded fast foods, fast food “play” environments and the difficulty of finding toy foods that represented fruits and vegetables and non-fast food and items not found on a typical “kids’ menu.”

How much influence, good and bad, do these branded items have on kids’ own food choices and preferences? What’s the impact of branded food items on a young child?

An interesting body of research has revealed just how much children’s preferences for foods can be affected by branding. Children’s preference for certain brands plays a large role in their preference for foods. Studies with young children have found they show a significant preference for foods if they believe the food to be from McDonalds, a finding which held even for food that is not even marketed, nor available, from McDonalds. For example, preschool children have been found to prefer carrots if they are packaged in McDonalds wrapping (when compared to the same food not packaged in McDonalds wrapping). Likewise, other research has found young children significantly preferred the taste of foods with popular characters on the packaging. What these studies show are just how young children are influenced by branding of foods and reveal the myriad of factors that are involved in children’s liking of food.

Based on your research, what advice would you offer parents on how they could use play food settings to positively impact their children’s relationship with food?

Play food settings can be used to improve children’s familiarity with healthy foods and thus, their willingness to try these foods in real life. Parents can use food-themed play settings to foster healthy nutritional behaviours by ensuring that children interact with a variety of healthy toy food replicas (such as fruits and vegetables, grains, and dairy). Through play in toy kitchens, supermarkets, and restaurants, children can also be encouraged to pretend to cook and eat healthy foods. Importantly, parents need to ensure that children are interacting with a variety of healthy toy foods, engaging in healthy mealtime behaviours, and experiencing adults who model healthy behaviours. However, it is essential to emphasize that this strategy is intended to complement and not replace offering new foods at meals on multiple occasions.

Meghan Lynch, thank you for taking so much time to share your insights. This is great information.

Additional Research by Meghan Lynch, and Related Research:

Lynch, M. Playing With Food: A Novel Approach To Understanding
Nutritional Behaviour Development. Appetite. 54(3), 591-594.

Lynch, M. The Use of Toy Foods in Visual Familiarity Development:
Preliminary Research and Future Directions. Journal of Nutrition
Education and Behavior.

Lynch, M. Play-based settings: An innovative method for the study and
development of nutritional behaviours in young children. Pediatric
Nursing.

Effects of Fast Food Branding on Young Children’s Taste Preferences Thomas N. Robinson, MD, MPH; Dina L. G. Borzekowski, EdD; Donna M. Matheson, PhD; Helena C. Kraemer, PhD

You can contact Meghan Lynch if you would like to cite her research or need more information:

Meghan Lynch
Mail: University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, 155
College Street, Health Science Building, ON, M5T 3M7, Canada
Email: meghan.lynch@utoronto.ca

Posted in By Beth, Healthier Eating | Leave a comment

Words I wish I’d written: chronos, kairos and carpe diem

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Ali

Image pulled from momastery blog. Which you should read. Go.

If you haven’t read this piece on Chronos and Kairos and the old lady at the store — and you may have, for it’s a facebook favorite these days — read it now. It captures the experience of parenting so beautifully. It is something to hold on to when you’re in the middle of trying to get dinner on the table and you just burned the rice and one child is sobbing because her balloon popped and another is sobbing because you haven’t done her cousin’s Flat Stanley project yet and the dog just pooped on the floor again and the phone is ringing and you have 14 urgent emails you haven’t returned and I’m sorry, but couldn’t you have taken your muddy boots off before walking across the entire house?

Wishing you all kairos. Lots of Kairos.

Posted in By Ali, I Heart This | Leave a comment

Black-eyed Peas in a Healthy Soup for New Year’s Luck

Posted on January 2, 2012 by bethb

By Beth

For the last few years, we’ve made sure to make black-eyed peas for New Year’s. I never even questioned the source of this mostly southern tradition. It’s an excuse to eat black-eyed peas with smoked ham hock. ‘Nuff said. That more traditional recipe is in our cookbook, The Cleaner Plate Club, and plenty of greens recipes to go with it, too.

In the South, the peas symbolize prosperity, greens mean money and the pork is said to symbolize the pig’s hard efforts at foraging for itself. Some of the history behind the custom comes from Civil War days when the Union soliders wiped out all the food crops in the South, leaving just “animal feed” like field corn and the black-eyed peas.

Other history point to farther back, such as ancient Syria and Jewish Rosh Hashana, then brought to the US by Jewish immigrants in the 1700s.

This year, we skipped the ham and went for a vegetarian approach. After the holiday excess, I have to admit that we were all ready for something light. This soup is based on the Fall Vegetable Soup in the book, with the addition of farro, a wholegrain the offers some protein, and, of course, black-eyed peas which are available fresh this time of year. Also check in the freezer section for frozen ones.

Still, we have the peas for prosperity, kale as the greens for money, and the cheap, healthy protein source of farro for my own foraging, as well as some herbs from my garden (what has not totally frozen yet). And, without the saturated fat from the smoked pork, well, this soup adds a healthy start on your New Year’s resolutions.

To modify the recipe for dried black-eyed peas, you’ll need to soak them overnight. After sweating the onion, celery, garlic, and carrot, add the stock and black-eyed peas (drained and rinsed from the soaking water) and bring those to a boil, then simmer for 1.5 hours before going forward with the rest of the recipe.

Makes 12 servings

2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2/3 cup chopped carrot (about 
3 medium carrots)

2/3 cup chopped celery (about 3 stalks)

2 garlic cloves, minced

10 cups vegetable or chicken stock

1 Tbsp dried summer savory

2 tsp dried thyme

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped

2 bay leaves

2 small Parmesan rinds, optional

1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and diced small (¼-inch cubes)

1 lb winter squash, peeled and diced small (¼-inch cubes)
1 cup farro, rinsed and drained or 1 cup lentils, rinsed, sorted and drained

1 lb. fresh or frozen black-eyed peas

1 bunch (about 12 oz) kale or chard greens, stemmed and chopped

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

  1. Warm the oil over medium-low heat and add the onion, carrot and celery. Sweat this combination, known as a mirepoix, until the onion is translucent.
  2. Add the stock and the savory, rosemary, thyme and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the sweet potato, squash and Parmesan rinds, and then simmer for 30 minutes.
  3. Add the farro or lentils and black-eyed peas and simmer for 30 more minutes (or until the lentils, if present, are al dente).
  4. Add the greens, and simmer for 5 more minutes.
  5. Remove the bay leaf and Parmesan rinds. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

When we were eating, my six-year-old who often won’t eat soft textures of orange foods, said, “Mom, can we have this soup every New Year?” As picky as kids can be, especially after a sugar rush of holiday desserts, I think that’s about as lucky as it gets.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you are off to a healthy, happy new start.

 

Posted in By Beth, Healthier Eating, Recipes | Leave a comment

Make it mindless – another new year’s resolution post

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Ali

I woke at 5:40 AM today. I planned to meet a group of people for a pre-dawn run. I’d set the alarm on the late side, leaving myself limited time to brush teeth, put my hair in a ponytail, and throw on sweats and fleece and a reflector vest (safety first, people). Still, I stayed in bed an extra few minutes, because I couldn’t help but listen to NPR’s morning edition story on breaking bad habits.

Forget willpower. It's about the environment, yo.

The story is worth a listen; it’s about the critical importance of environment in shaping habits — both good and bad. The nine-minute program begins 40 years ago, with heroin-addicted U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, and their “shockingly low” rate of relapse after returning to the U.S. But it speaks to habits and behaviors in general — what actually motivates people to change behaviors.

Surprise, surprise: for most behaviors, certainly the daily ones, it’s not enough to set goals, or to change attitudes. That new year’s resolution you set? It alone won’t be enough to motivate change. That’s because we are creatures of our environment. The physical cues of the spaces we occupy drive our behavior in incredibly powerful, and wholly unconscious, ways.  The story notes that 45% of what people do every day is done in the same environment and is repeated. The more habitual something is, the more we “outsource our behavior” (researchers’ term from the story) to the environment in which we do it.

That, researchers say, is likely why soldiers who were treated for addiction in Vietnam had such startlingly low relapse rates – they never used heroin in their home environment, so it was easier to make the break.

When it comes to food, the effect of environment has been powerfully demonstrated by Brian Wansink, who runs the food psychology lab at Cornell. When it comes to food, intention makes almost no difference; people eat what the environment tells them to eat. Nobody seems to want to hear that – we like saying words like willpower and personal responsibility. But his research is unequivocal.

We quoted his research several in our book; his ideas had resonated with us, because they confirmed what we had ourselves seen when it came to food and kids: that simply by shopping a farmers’ market, or staying out of the central aisles of supermarkets, we had magically found healthier food in our carts. We had magically seemed to have fewer fights with our kids. For me, it really did feel something like magic, too; I didn’t even have to think about it. It just kinda’ happened.

The environment-as-driver idea is probably why the billion-dollar diet industry just doesn’t work 95% of the time. And why decades of nutrition education and cries of “personal responsibility!” haven’t seemed to make a damn bit of difference for most Americans. It’s also why I recoil from giving chirpy advice, or setting out to “educate” people about feeding kids. It’s not, I believe, that people don’t know what to do, or don’t want to do it. It’s that as a society, we have constructed environments that makes it darned hard to do it even the things we most want.

Here’s a post I wrote about Wansink’s book, Mindless Eating, nearly five whole years ago. I’d still argue that this psychology book, which is not a diet book, is the best darned diet book you’ll ever find.

Back to this morning: when I finally hopped out of bed and dashed, extra-fast, through my pre-dawn routine, I reflected on environment. I didn’t feel like running; I rarely do before I begin. But I knew that my only job would be to get myself there: to just show up at a specific street corner, at the appointed time, in the dark. Once there — with people I see only when I run, on a street corner I never otherwise visit — the environment would take over. I would just start running. The circumstance itself would do it for me, begin moving my feet for me.

And it did. If we start with our environment, it turns out, the rest — healthy food, our own two feet, whatever we most want to change — will follow.

Posted in Cleaner Plate Book Club, Healthier Eating | 2 Comments

Fun is the Key to Making Healthy Family Resolutions That Succeed in the New Year Ahead

Posted on January 1, 2012 by bethb
by Beth
As we enter the New Year, maybe its time to try a new approach with resolutions. The same-old pattern of resolving for a fantastic, healthiest year yet that fades by mid-month — much less mid-year — needs a fresh start of its own.
Sometimes resolutions fail because we make big plans of sudden change, and the change is not something we want to make, or something easy or pleasurable to alter. Resolutions often mean giving up pleasure, not gaining it. It gets more complicated if those resolutions you make are for the whole family, not just yourself. If, at 12:01 a.m. January first, you start passing around the tray of broccoli bites to your vegetable-hating family, it’s a good bet that resolution will last only until 12:02 a.m.
Often, it seems like the only people who succeed at those New Year’s goals are those highly motivated already. The good news is, however, that when fun is added to the equation, less highly motivated people may actually perform better, according to an intriguing study by researchers Dolores Albarracín and William Hart at the University of Florida.
“It’s not that those with high achievement motivation always perform better,” Albarracín said. “You can also get the low achievement motivation folks to perform better than the highs when you present a task as enjoyable and fun.”
Instead of setting a single healthy resolution up for failure, try a series of family challenges that bring fun and a bit of a game approach to your goals for the New Year.
Here’s some new ideas from The Cleaner Plate Club, that offer short and fun challenges you can take on as a family adventure:
  • Designate each family member a week where they have to come up with one healthy recipe idea that they will eat. Everyone tries it together and votes it “in” or “out” of the family menu.
  • Make a fitness challenge with a prize for the winner. The prize shouldn’t be a trip to Ben and Jerry’s, but maybe a long-desired activity or even a “get out of household chores for a week” certificate. Affordable pedometers can even make the challenge incorporate into every day life! He who takes the most steps each month wins the title!
  • Eat your way through the alphabet. One letter every two weeks, a vegetable or fruit or healthy dish starting with that bi-weekly letter.
  • Make a list of new, fun physical activities to try as a family. Foxtrot to fencing, zumba to zip-lining, change it up. You may discover a new sport together, or at least get some very interesting pictures for the family album! Affordable activities are often available at community centers.
  • Find volunteer activities that build on your own health goals. Volunteering at a food bank can offer a day’s worth of physical activity along with a better appreciation of having healthy food on the table at home.

Over time, note the challenges that go well and work for your family. Then, base your bigger changes on things you find fun, incorporating these more and more into your schedule. Ideally, the experience will also offer quality family time, too. Which is healthy for everyone.

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