ZisBoomBah

I was walking through the grocery store the other day and I realized that some veggies and fruit have really cool names. Dinosaur kale seemed like a vegetable kids would surely want to gobble up, right? And who wouldn’t be curious what UFO peaches must taste like. I wondered if catchy veggie names can win kids over or if a veggie is a veggie is a veggie to a picky eater? It turns out I was right. Cool names for otherwise common vegetables evidently do make a difference in the wondering minds of little children. Who knew?

Scientists conducted a study with 189 four year olds and proceeded to feed them a lunch with carrots. The next day they fed them regular carrots again but called them X-Ray Vision Carrots. It turns out, when the carrots allegedly provided the kids with X-ray vision they ate twice as many. The cool part is that even after the carrots weren’t called anything but carrots the kids continued to eat about 50% more.

Brian Wansink of Cornell University says,  “Whether it be ‘power peas’ or ‘dinosaur broccoli trees,’ giving a food a fun name makes kids think it will be more fun to eat. And it seems to keep working — even the next day.” Wow! Tonight at dinner when you put those veggies in front of your kids, call them something cool and see if they eat them. You can make a free call using the Super Sonic Magic Green Bean Telephone to let me know how the experiment turns out.

Read more about the catchy veggie names study.