Growing up, everyone had that one food they did not like. For most people it would be a vegetable. Many children do not like vegetables at all. Slipping their broccoli into a napkin or even feeding it to their pet are just some different, kids invented mischievous ways toget out of eating their greens. But why do children even do this in the first place?

It generally takes 10-15 times to try something before you enjoy it and incorporate it into your diet. This is the same with animals. If an animal in the wild is exposed to a new food source it will take them 10-15 times of trying it before deciding whether to add it to their diet or not. Children are not as old as adults and have not tried vegetables as many times as adults have. “This is also why most people don’t like other bitter substances such as coffee, beer, and dark chocolate the first time they try them” (Spoon University). Many children associate vegetables with a chore, and it feels like they are forced to eat it. Whilst junk food or sweets are always given as a reward or as a celebration.

As a child, Kayla Seo (10) did not enjoy vegetables, she still doesn’t! Seo says, “I don’t like vegetables because they just don’t taste good.”

For children and adolescents aged 2-19 years, in the years 2017 to 2020, the rate of obesity was 19.7% and affected about 14.7 million children and adolescents in the United States (Centers for Disease Control).  19.7% may not seem like a lot, but in reality, that is one-fifth of the children in the United States! We can easily change this by motivating the youth population to eat more vegetables and encourage them to take care of their bodies. Some ways to get your child to eat vegetables are to pair them up with dips and sauces that they enjoy and to have them try it as many times as possible. Exposure to new foods makes them more likely to eat them. Children often throw temper tantrums because they do not want to eat their vegetables, and even I Was one of them. Although I still don’t enjoy some vegetables, a few have begun to grow on me. As my parents exposed me to vegetables, I gained confidence in eating them. Vegetables still will remain my childhood enemy, and no matter how hard I fought, the leafy greens always win.