The battle to get children to eat their greens

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX

Two small pieces of lettuce are the only things standing between 3-year-old Angus Grainger and his pudding.

He pushes them around the plate, hoping to make them smaller or, better still, disappear altogether.

Angus has already finished a plateful of spaghetti bolognaise - a lot of it by hand. But the salad is a bit of a hurdle.

His two big brothers and little sister are enjoying their plates of ice cream. Toddler Abbey even has her plate tipped up to her mouth to get every last morsel.

Angus' pudding plate sits, waiting.

"You know the rule," says father Russell. "If you haven't finished your dinner before we've finished our pudding, you won't be having any. Just eat that lettuce."

"I'm just cutting it up," comes the speedy reply.

It's probably just a slight variation on the comments being made by hundreds of children around the country in the nightly battle otherwise known as dinner.

While parents seem to have no trouble getting kids to eat pudding, how do they get them to first eat their main course? And what should they be feeding their children to make sure their diet is healthy and nutritious?

Russell Grainger and wife Jillian have four hungry mouths to feed, and although they favour meals that are easy to make in bulk, they are conscious of giving their growing children a healthy diet.

That means that things such as rice and pasta are on the menu a lot, although they make sure there is always a decent helping of veges or salad as well.

Scanning a Health Ministry sample diet for a 6-year-old, Jillian Grainger says it contains a lot of the things her children eat ... "although the boys probably eat more than this. They seem to be constantly hungry."

A comprehensive national study of children's diets - what they eat and how much - has never been done in New Zealand, but plans are under way to start one next year.

A pilot study for the survey has almost been completed in a joint effort by Massey and Auckland Universities and the Auckland University of Technology.

The pilot will pre-test the best ways for the nationwide study to be done, and how it can best find out what our children are eating, when they eat, what food groups they eat from and how they are growing.

The study also aims to collect information about the average heights and weights of New Zealand children - information that also has not been compiled in such detail before.

Patsy Watson, project leader of Massey's human nutrition department, says the study is well overdue and is a "very exciting project to be involved in."

It will take one year and will observe children selected at random.

But dietitians, working on information and experience they already have, say children will eat practically anything if you teach them early.

And junk food from time to time is not all bad - provided the rest of your child's diet has all the right ingredients.

Dietitian Jeni Pearce says parents have to remember that children have small tummies.

They need to snack often to fill up, and that is a golden opportunity to make sure they are getting their "5-plus" - at least five servings of fruit and vegetables every day.

"That is a minimum, so you can keep on feeding them fruit and veges as long as they will eat it, really," she says.

Water, milk or pure juice are always going to be the better options to drink, but occasional doses of fizzy soft drinks are not going to hinder a child's development.

The trick is to get children used to eating healthy foods at a young age, Ms Pearce says.

If they grow up snacking on fruit and veges, they will usually continue to do so, and will then pass the habit on to their own children.

Education, she says, is the key.

And it is a lesson some children appear to have learned. At Richmond Rd School in Ponsonby, Auckland, this week, the Weekend Herald talked to children about the contents of their lunchboxes.

Sandwiches or filled rolls were most popular, with a good smattering of fruit as well.

Ebony Carmichael, aged 10, said she liked her chicken sandwiches, but if it was up to her she would have a pie every day.

"But that's not healthy. "Sandwiches and fruit are healthy and much better for you."

Another authority on good lunch fare, Malveeka Ballu, also 10, said she liked to eat lots of fruit - "especially





cold oranges" - although a packet of chips would never go amiss.

Tainui Walters, 9, says "bananas are best," even though he would much rather wash them down with a can of Coke than a bottle of water.

Their schoolmate Harley Ngapere, 9, was enjoying a very large packet of chips and an ice cream for his lunch - something that may not have looked like the makings of a particularly healthy diet.

But, as Ms Pearce pointed out, "you don't know what he eats for breakfast and dinner. It could be that the rest of his diet is more than adequately addressing his nutritional needs."

Teaching children to eat their greens early has been the subject of overseas research as well, starting even before birth.

United States scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia have found that foods eaten late in pregnancy tend to be favoured by children as they grow up.

Their research project involved three groups of pregnant women. The first group were given carrot juice in their third trimester, the second group were given it when they were breastfeeding. The third group drank only water at these times.

When the children were 6 months old the researchers gave them cereal prepared with either carrot juice or water.

They found the babies exposed to the carrot juice before birth were much more enthusiastic about the carrot porridge than the plain version, and say their discovery is the first demonstration that exposure in the womb affects taste preferences later in life.

New Zealand's Ministry of Health has its own guidelines about healthy eating for children, containing common sense advice for parents. It says children need to eat many different foods. It encourages mini-meals or snacks, and treats every now and then.

The ministry has also put together sample diets for 3-year-olds, 6-year-olds and 11-year-olds, which it has published on its website, www.moh.govt.nz.

While the diets are not necessarily to be followed rigidly, they do give an indication of what portions to give and variety.

Despite what children are eating the rest of the time, breakfast is still considered the most important meal of the day.

A recent study into its impact has just been completed in Auckland.

The results prove what dietitians and nutritionists have been saying for years - breakfast gives kids more energy and can improve their performance in school.

The month-long study, called Get Going With Breakfast, involved both secondary and primary school students.

Papatoetoe West Primary School principal Trevor Canute said the work habits of children eating breakfast every day showed a marked improvement. "During the month of the programme, we saw an increase in academic results and, most importantly, the participating pupils had higher self-esteem and displayed a more caring attitude to their classmates."

In the study the children were given cereal, bread and other breakfast foods and were watched while they ate them at school.

They were also surveyed about their normal breakfast eating habits and how they felt in the mornings at the start and the end of the programme.

Ms Pearce, the campaign spokeswoman, said the results confirmed that breakfast was crucial to mental, physical and academic performances, as well as improved behaviour.

"The research results show that eating regular meals like breakfast reduces in-between meal hunger and the need to snack on foods high in fat, which contribute to child obesity."

Breakfast is not a problem in the Grainger household, except perhaps the logistical nightmare of getting Isaac, 8, Ben, 6, Angus, 3, and 17-month-old Abbey, all fed, dressed and ready for the day.

"I like toast," confides Angus.

"It's delicious."