Getting Kids to Eat Whole Grains

(November 9, 2008) - If you want your child to eat more whole grains, it's a good idea to do it slowly, not all at once. Elementary school students will eat more whole grains when healthier bread products are gradually introduced into their school lunches, a new study shows. (Read about "Dietary Guidelines")

Whole grain breads are strongly recommended as part of a healthy diet, but children and pre-teens won't always eat them. For this study, researchers monitored how much bread students threw away, and whether that amount increased as the percentage of whole-grain flour in the bread and rolls was gradually increased.

The study included meals fed to kindergartners through sixth-graders at two elementary schools over the course of a school year. Red and white whole-grain flour was added incrementally to products, but students showed no strong preference for either type of flour. Students didn't throw away more bread products until the percentage of whole-grain flour in the bread and rolls reached about 70 percent.

The research is important because it shows that a gradual approach to improving children's overall diets can be successful both for parents and school food-service workers, said Len Marquart, one of the study's authors.