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Recent Newspaper & Online Columns by Kate Scannell MD

Picture this: Kids eating their vegetables willingly

By Dr. Kate Scannell, Syndicated Columnist
First published in print: February 5, 2012

It's often said that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Now, according to new research, we also know that a picture might be worth "the price of a meal ticket" to healthier eating habits for young children.

This week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, University of Minnesota researchers reported that elementary-school children ate more vegetables when the compartments in their lunch trays were lined with photographs of vegetables. Pictures of carrots served as . . . well, carrots, and led three times as many children to that veggie in the cafeteria line. Images of green beans inspired twice as many children to give beans a chance.

That's the good news.

The not-so-good news is that so few students were consuming carrots and beans in the first place that a twofold or threefold increase in their ranks merely amounted to small potatoes. For example, among about 650 students, only 42 children chose green beans on a normal lunch day. That number jumped -- or limped, really -- to 96 when the children were provided with the photograph-lined lunch trays on another day. Make no beans about it -- a technical doubling of consumption occurred with the intervention, and even that minor success should be celebrated. However, it's a hard fact to swallow that more than 85 percent of children still shunned the vegetable.

Unfortunately, data are not provided about the amount of food wasted. But -- no surprise to anyone who has dared to visit a school cafeteria during lunchtime -- the report suggests that it certainly occurred. The waste must have been quantified because to determine whether the children selecting carrots and beans actually ate them, the researchers had to collect and weigh all the uneaten vegetables from the tables, containers and -- yes -- the floor. As troubling as that data may have been, it could have provided us with helpful insights about our stewardship of food resources.
The actual lunch-tray photographs used by the researchers were not reproduced in the journal publication. However, I am going to assume that they exhibited good taste and highlighted the vegetables' best features.

Yet even if Annie Leibovitz had taken those photos, the cutest baby carrot would have a tough time posing real competition for children's hearts, minds and stomachs against 20-foot-tall french fries lurking on ubiquitous billboards. Or against junk foods performing commercial rap on 42-inch plasma-screen TVs. Or against winsome celebrities endorsing gallon-sized soft drinks through Internet ads.

My father fully appreciated the power of images to influence children's eating habits. When I was a child, he made sure that the latest Maryknoll Missionaries' magazine was always displayed in our living room. I was deeply affected by the graphic photographs of emaciated people suffering starvation throughout the world, of malnourished children with huge lifeless eyes and swollen bellies. It was easy to feel grateful for whatever food appeared on my plate -- and to think that wasting food was outright wrong.

I do not propose that we line children's lunch trays with photographs of starving people to coax them toward nutrition-promoting foods, more diet-conscious proportions and less food waste.
As it stands, too many children who are dependent upon school lunches for basic sustenance do not need such reminders. While delighted to read about the current study's findings, I do not see more photographs of more vegetables winning the big food fight in this country on behalf of children's best interests.

But if we hope for children to view their food choices differently, I think we need to help them re-envision food beyond billboards and commercial messages, beyond their lunch trays, beyond images of food isolated on photographs or drawn onto cute government pyramids and plates.

We need to help them see how food directly connects to human welfare and dignity, how it intimately associates with human health and survival. We need to help them envisage human hands that labor to bring food to the table, and others that remain empty in search of something to eat.
We need to show them how food justice and food security relate to social and environmental justice.

Let's picture that.
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Kate Scannell is a Bay Area physician and the author most recently of "Flood Stage."
Copyright 2012, Kate Scannell