'There are healthy things inside': Children's thoughts about, experiences with and approaches to vegetable and fruit consumption

Abstract

Children's vegetable and fruit (V&F) consumption is generally lower than dietary recommendations. Thus, this study explored 15 Swedish children's thoughts, experiences and approaches to V&F consumption. Individual interviews were conducted with 10- to 12-year-old children (eight girls and seven boys) of diverse cultural backgrounds. The interviews were thematically analysed, and a final step adopted a phenomenographic approach. The results reveal that the children thought of V&F as healthy, but their knowledge of V&F's health effects was fragmented and lacked context. They named both adults and their peers as important in encouraging or discouraging them from consuming V&F. Many of them also described creative and playful uses of V&F. From the children's thoughts and experiences, the following elements were identified as influencing their V&F consumption: (1) the V&F's taste and serving style, (2) the impact of others, (3) beliefs about V&F's healthiness and (4) their conscious habits and choices. The researchers categorised the children's different ways of relating to the elements as the following approaches to children's V&F consumption: 'The food determines what I eat', 'Other people determine what I eat', 'My knowledge determines what I eat' and 'My conscious habits determine what I eat'. We suggest that future efforts to promote children's V&F consumption consider these approaches, for example by supporting peer norms, sensory play and training and more comprehensive age-appropriate explanations of V&F's health effects as well as educational tools that empower children to self-monitor habits that facilitate their adequate consumption of V&F.

Keywords: Children; Experiences; Fruit consumption; Phenomenographic approach; Thoughts; Vegetable consumption.