[Source:  Medical News Today]

Pass the peas please! How often do we hear our children say this? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey of adolescents, only 21% of our children eat the recommended 5 or more fruits and vegetables per day. So not very many children are asking their parents to “pass the peas,” and parents are resorting to other methods to get their children to eat their vegetables.
One popular method is hiding vegetables. There are even cookbooks devoted to doing this and new food products promise they contain vegetable servings but don’t taste like vegetables! But this ”sneaky” technique has been controversial, as some dietitians, doctors, and parents have argued that sneaking vegetables into food does not promote increased vegetable consumption because children are unaware they are eating vegetables, and are not likely to continue the practice into adulthood. A study in the March/April 2012 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that informing children of the presence of vegetables hidden within snack food may or may not alter taste preference. Acceptability of the vegetable-enriched snack food may depend on the frequency of prior exposure to the vegetable.
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