Tricking adults into eating more fruits and vegetables

How do health professionals get adults to eat more fruits and vegetables? Health professionals cannot simply say ‘follow the Food Guide” or “eat lots of fruits and vegetables,” but our messages must be framed in the context of what are the barriers and understanding social as well as behavioural theories of initiating changes. From Malcolm Gladwell TVO (2008) presentation, I realized the importance of the previous statement, and to be quite frank, recognized the power of mind manipulation in getting messages across and acted upon.

In his presentation, Gladwell gave the example of a public awareness campaign surrounding seatbelt use targeted towards adults. This intervention was created in the 70’s, as only 15% of individuals in vehicles wore seatbelts. A study found that instead of targeting adults, they would simply ask that adults ensure their children wore seatbelts. Within three years, the amount of people who wore their seat belts increased dramatically from 15% to 75%. This example as well as others, proves that adults are responsive when the safety of their children or vulnerable people is questioned. Subsequently, the children who were forced to wear the seatbelts began to regulate their parents to wear theirs as well.
Another example that demonstrates the agency of people in relation to protecting children, involves junk food advertisements towards children. This created a bit of debate between the WHO and private industries because children are considered part a vulnerable population, which is highly susceptible to manipulation of attractive packaging, high sugar and fat foods. Additionally, proportionately to the Fruits and Vegetables campaigns, private industries have much more advertisement and money invested into marketing their campaigns.

Generally speaking, mothers regulate their children and tell them to eat their vegetables; I think children in turn regulate their parents making sure they are eating their vegetables. An interesting study would be to see if this type of regulation makes adults healthier. It would also be interesting to see if parents eat healthier because they try to model behaviours in order to get there kids on board to eating more fruits and vegetables. According to a USA news article entitled, “Wish your kids ate more fruits and vegetables?” (2009) “when nutrition experts examined the eating habits of overweight children 4 to 9 and their parents, they found that kids tended to eat what their parents ate.”

Therefore, according to these messages, parents are helpless in the face of their children’s requests. They just can’t say no to little Jimmy when he says “Mom where’s your seatbelt?” or “Why do I have to eat vegetables if you don’t?”

Perhaps, if advertisement rests on parental fear that they are not being good parents we can trick them into changing their behaviours by positioning advertisement to rest on these fears (Evil laughter begins). While one can debate how ethical this is, the verdict is in, and the aforementioned method works.

So at the end of the day, when adults don’t like to be told what to do, we can say: A HA! Got you! Or at least little Jimmy got you. Now you will buckle your seat and eat your vegetables too!