(May 2018) Convincing children to eat green vegetables might be difficult in
part because their tastes often aren’t nurtured in infancy to accept the
bitterness of dark green vegetables.
The inability to
foster a taste for those vegetables isn’t simply because parents shy
away from them due to infants’ reaction. It’s likely related to the lack
of commercially prepared single-vegetable products available to parents
and caregivers to offer their infants and toddlers, according to a
study by researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine
on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
The study, which is to be
published this spring in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is
the first study to examine the prevalence and types of vegetables in
infant and toddler food manufactured and sold in the United States.
The
researchers compiled a database of 548 infant and toddler foods sold by
more than 20 U.S. companies. They then examined the ingredients and
nutrients using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s vegetable
categories.
Of the foods in the database, only 52 were
single-vegetable products and none of those were dark green vegetables
or beans/peas. In baby food that had multiple ingredients, fruits were
listed as the first ingredient in 37.8 percent of the products, more
commonly than all vegetables. Red/orange vegetables, such as carrots and
sweet potatoes, were the first ingredient in 23.7 percent of products,
while dark green vegetables were listed first in only 1.1 percent of
products.
“The commercial infant and toddler foods market
in the U.S. does not appear to provide caregivers with an adequate type
and selection of products to facilitate children’s later acceptance of
the kinds of vegetables they will encounter and be encouraged to consume
once they have transitioned to table foods,” writes Kameron J. Moding,
PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatrics, and her
co-authors.