Children and vegetables often don’t get along, but new research suggests that weaning children who are accustomed to variety in fruit and vegetable consumption are more likely to like vegetables when they grow up and eat a healthier diet. A research conducted a few years ago, on a sample of children studied in the early 1990s, had already established that children weaned on home-made foods (and not industrial homogenized) were more likely to follow a healthy and plant-based diet, preferring without making a fuss about fruit and vegetables. Now another research, conducted in several countries, including England, Greece and Portugal and published in the British Journal of Nutritionspeak clearly: children should be weaned with vegetable and fruit purees, without “mixing them together”, but trying to give them one vegetable or one fruit at a time, alternating the types.

The children in the study ate spinach and pea purees and even artichokes. According to the pediatricians involved in the study, children are thus able to enjoy both the most bitter and sweeter vegetables and all varieties of fruit. As they grow up, they will no longer disdain fruit and vegetables in their diet, and will also tend to make healthier choices outside the home. Not as easy as it sounds. Won’t the child throw tantrums by eating a puree of spinach? According to nutritionists it is probable, but parents must arm themselves with holy patience and continue to offer them. The changes gradually come and the children end up eating all kinds of vegetables.