Community Corner

Maryland Children Fall Short of Fruit and Vegetable Consumption

Parents, professionals recommend how to get children to eat more fruits and veggies in light of June—Fruits and Vegetables Month.

Less than 30 percent of Maryland children ages 2 to 11 consumed the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day in 2010, according to a Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene survey. Leading health organizations are aiming to boost this percentage in light of June, National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month.

But one couldn’t guess fruits and veggies are taboo for Maryland kids, visiting the farmers market at 5211 Paint Branch Parkway on Saturday morning. Several parents were there food shopping with their kids, and most said they had no problem getting their children to eat fruits and veggies.

Take Alexander Williams, 40, shopping with his wife Melissa Ho, 41, and their “greens maniac” 4½-year-old son Marcel Ho. “He often has to be told to eat something besides his vegetables,” Alexander Williams said of his son.

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The chef of the family, he credits his son’s appetite for healthy food to eating together as a family. He avoids serving his son meals that are different from what he and his wife eat.

"Kids eat what you eat, end of story,” he said.

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Others get a little sneaky. Stafanie Rine, 29, said that although her 17-month-old son Ethan Rine loves fruits, and usually eats vegetables, she sometimes has to be creative. She’ll mix veggies into a fruit smoothie, or chop them up into little pieces and add them to sauces.

Though sneakiness isn’t necessary, expecting kids to eat unappetizing-looking fruits and vegetables is unrealistic, said Dr. Daisy Miller, a behavioral nutrition counselor with practices located in Riverdale Park and Gaithersburg.

“Parents are frustrated their kids are not just picking up pieces of raw spinach and just eating it,” Miller said.

When dealing with picky eaters, parents should offer fruits and vegetables but not push too hard, Miller said. She dubbed this an effective “parent/child feeding relationship.”

“The kids need to feel like they are they’re own eaters ... that they’re in charge of their own bodies, of what they like to eat, of what goes in their own mouths,” Miller said.

Other suggestions are out there.

A University of Maryland preliminary study suggests that family members—specifically grandmothers of rural, low-income families—could also influence how many servings of fruits and vegetables children consume.

Almost all of the 18 grandmothers surveyed said they buy some or all of the food their grandchildren eat, and more than half always or most of the time pay for the food that their grandchildren eat with them. The majority said they at least sometimes serve their grandchildren an evening meal.

The preliminary study proposes that nutrition education programming should target grandmothers. (The lead researcher, Dr. Bonnie Braun of the School of Public Health Herschel S. Horowitz Health Literacy Center and the University of Maryland Extension, was unavailable for comment before publication of this article.)

Elas Mejicanos, 56 of Brentwood, buys food and cooks for her three grandchildren, ages 2, 3 and 11. She said they eat most fruits and vegetables—listing broccoli, corn, squash and mango as some of their favorites—but there are a few select foods that her grandchildren don’t like, and Mejicanos avoids serving those foods to them.

Her 11-year-old granddaughter, for example, Katalina Martinez said she doesn’t eat spinach, tomatoes or carrots. “I just don’t like it,” she said.

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services, emphasizes the need for Americans to eat more fruits and vegetables. It reports that most Americans 2 years and older fail to consume enough vegetables, and most Americans ages 4 years and older do not consume enough fruits.

However, Miller said there are very few children she has counseled who eat so few fruits and veggies that their health is truly jeopardized. Those are the children who have food anxieties and refuse to eat anything but a handful of foods.

“Something goes off in their head and they think ‘I’m not going to do it,’” she said.

One child she treated ate nothing but Cheerios and milk. When he was 10 years old, after counseling, he started eating meatloaf, too.

“Something in the brain said ‘That is safe.’ ... I think there’s no rhyme or reason to it sometimes,” Miller said.

It’s common for children with food anxieties to overcome their complex at about that age, Miller said. Until then, there’s not much a parent can do, but it’s important to not pressure the child to eat other foods. Instead, try to diffuse the anxiety.

“You don’t make a big deal out of it,” she said.


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