A classroom-based intervention to motivate preschoolers to eat vegetables they dislike: A quasi-experimental study

The beneficial effects of vegetables for children’s health are well known, thus many intervention strategies were developed to promote children’s vegetable consumption. However, instead of focusing on the vegetables children disliked, most of the interventions focused on general vegetables. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a classroom-based intervention for encouraging preschoolers to eat the vegetables they dislike following the steps of quasi-experimental study. First, a questionnaire was used to identify the top three vegetables the children dislike most (namely bitter melon, green pepper, and eggplant) and the three they like most (namely cabbage, cauliflower, and carrot). Second, the pre-test questionnaires answered by parents were disseminated to the intervention group (n=46) and control group (n=35) for evaluating the possibility of eating the six vegetables. Third, the intervention group received a two-day classroom-based intervention program, including puppetry, puzzle games and eating the vegetables cooked with the special recipes. In the meanwhile, the take home recipes and homework will be provided to children and parents. Last, a week later, the post-test questionnaires answered by parents were collected. The results of repeated ANOVA indicated that the intervention group had a significantly better improvement in the probabilities of eating the vegetables the preschoolers disliked most than the control group. There existed no differences of the probabilities of eating the vegetables they liked most. The most effective activity of the intervention was to cook the vegetables in a different way. It is suggested that new recipes can help the preschoolers accepted the tasted of those foods.