Technology for picky eaters: EIT Food launches e-books for finicky children

11 Dec 2019 --- New technology helps address the age-old issue of picky eating in children. Based on the evidence that children who are exposed to pictures of vegetables are more likely to eat them, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Food is funding the See & Eat project, which includes free e-books for children and families. As childhood obesity rates continue to climb globally, turning toward technology could help diversify children’s diets with more vegetables.

“At around two years of age, children often develop food neophobia, where they might become reluctant to try unfamiliar foods and refuse to eat foods they have enjoyed in the past. This is a normal response and thought to be an evolutionary mechanism as children start to recognize and categorize food. Though food neophobia is not exclusive to vegetables, they are a common food that children refuse to eat. This is because they have strong bitter tastes that children tend to avoid,” Natalie Masento, a collaborator on the See & Eat project and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading, tells NutritionInsight. 

Each See & Eat e-book tells the farm-to-fork journey of a different vegetable and can be personalized with pictures, videos and text. Masento explains that showing pictures of vegetables to a child makes them more familiar, thus helping overcome food fussiness. 

“Visual familiarity can be in the form of pictures, but observing vegetables in the supermarket and helping parents cook in the kitchen are also ways of encouraging familiarity. Research also suggests that it is not only visual familiarity that helps encourage vegetable consumption – the other senses are important too. Therefore, encouraging children to touch and smell vegetables can also support this process,” she adds. 

The e-books have been developed based on research by Professor Carmel Houston-Price and her team at the University of Reading. They had previously found that that hard-copy books about vegetables help to familiarize children with new foods and, ultimately, help them to eat a wider variety.

“When children did taste the vegetables they had seen in their books, parents said that they liked them more and ate more of them. This year with the launch of the See and Eat project, the same research team wanted to explore whether these effects could be found using an e-book. They are a new way that families may read stories to their children, especially with the increasing number of tablets in the home. Importantly, e-books offer the opportunity for stories to be edited, allowing for interactive and personalized content,” explains Masento. 

Encouraging children to touch and smell vegetables can also support more adventurous eating.A touch of health
The team is examining whether this extra interactivity and personalization through e-books, such as adding photos or videos of shopping for, preparing or eating vegetables, can support children to become even more receptive to new vegetables. They have also begun an online study to evaluate whether the e-books have the same effects on children’s acceptance of vegetables as hard-copy books. The researchers hope to find that after two weeks of being read to, the children are more willing to taste the vegetable chosen by the parent. 

The See & Eat project is supported by the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) and also includes resources such as meal planners, shopping lists, and family-friendly recipes, developed to support parents and carers in encouraging their children to eat more vegetables. The e-books are free to download and are currently available in English and Italian. Next year, the e-books will be launched in three additional languages.

Technology is increasingly being harnessed to help people make healthier choices. Genetic testing company DnaNudge has launched new pop-up services at UK-based Waitrose and John Lewis. Shoppers can take a quick, on-site cheek swab to generate a personalized DNA report revealing key nutrition-related health traits. Meanwhile, FoodMarble Aire is a portable breath test and app to measure and track digestive health. 

Additionally, the new Food Explorer Club app is also using screens to help encourage children to make healthier choices. Parents or caregivers create a family account in the app, set up a profile for each child and start rewarding them with badges and points for accomplishments such as trying new foods. These points can then be exchanged for rewards set by the parents.

By Katherine Durrell