Should You (Really) Bribe Your Kids to Eat Healthfully?
For the second week in a row, I've found inspiration for my column in a favorite radio podcast: This time, it was from a Freakonomics episode entitled "Why You Should Bribe Your Kids." The show features a bunch of economists discussing casual anecdotes and more structured experiments in which incentives -- from larger financial payouts to dime-store trinkets -- worked to induce children to choose a healthier food over a less healthy alternative.
In the discussion that ensues, the economists talk about how incentives may be important to inducing people who tend to live in the moment -- children and adults alike -- to make good choices for themselves today, even though the benefits will only be realized in the longer term. Their conclusion appears to be that, yes, we should bribe our kids to eat healthfully -- because doing so results in desirable behavior changes for the majority of children, and if they don't make these healthful decisions today, there will be adverse outcomes for them in the future.
Hmmm. Not sure I agree.
I guess the question of whether it makes sense to bribe your kids to eat a healthy food depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to "get a vegetable into them," then the economists' research clearly suggests bribery is the way to go. Offering a toy, some money or a privilege in exchange for taking three bites of broccoli, say, will likely get the broccoli into the mouth and down the hatch. It is less clear from the economists' short-term research, however, whether these daily incentives produce longer-term habits of eating healthy foods once the bribes are no longer being offered. (As a sidenote, it's also unclear whether the underlying premise -- that not eating a healthful food on any given day in childhood will have adverse consequences for the future -- is actually true. I suppose it's more likely true if you're offering a child the choice between eating a vegetable or eating a cookie, but less likely true if you offer them a choice between eating their vegetables or eating nothing.)
[Read: To Feed Challenging Children, Recruit More Cooks in the Kitchen .]
But should getting a specific healthy food "into a child" really be your goal? Does compelling those three bites of broccoli at age 4 truly have any long-term health benefits? In other words, is "getting vegetables into" a child so acutely important in early childhood such that it merits bribery? This question is particularly important if there is a risk that the act of bribery in childhood fosters a deep dislike for vegetables that translates into avoidance of these foods once a child grows up and is making his own independent food choices. While I haven't seen any formal research that addresses this question, I can tell you from my clinical practice that I see plenty of otherwise rational adult patients who flat out refuse to eat a particular food -- be it peas, spinach or lima beans -- because they were compelled to do so as children.
[Read: How Do We Get Kids to Like Healthy Foods? ]
An alternate approach with regard to feeding your children -- one that I have written about previously -- is that espoused by Ellyn Satter in her division of feeding responsibility. In this context, the goal is not to get specific foods into a child, but rather to offer healthy foods to children on a regular basis, period, and allow them to decide whether or not to eat these foods. Those of us who practice this method often experience long periods of time where no vegetables whatsoever "get into" our children's mouths whatsoever -- and we may even watch enviously as our neighbors' kids swallow mouthfuls of broccoli under the promise of the bribe du jour. But we're taking a long-term view -- one based on evidence that if we can facilitate self-motivated acceptance of healthy foods within our children, then their lifelong love of healthy eating will more than compensate for those lean weeks, months and even years -- in which they've been allowed to politely refuse healthy foods without being offered a bribe.
[Read: Rethinking the Kid-Veggie Relationship.]
In my domestic life, I reserve bribery for the few occasions in which it is actually essential and time-critical that my children adopt a desired behavior. I'll bribe my kids to take a gross-tasting medication they've been prescribed, or to pee in a public restroom they don't like so they don't have an accident while we're at the mall. But to take a few bites of squash or quinoa? No way. No mouthful of food is so healthy that it's worth the possibility of swaying their long-term food preferences away from the best stuff out there. After all -- to paraphrase Satter -- if you have to bribe them to eat it, how good will they think it really is?
As a mom who has just emerged from an almost yearlong period in which one of my children ignored virtually every vegetable offered to him, I say from experience that childhood nutrition is a marathon -- not a sprint. But the race is winnable if you patiently keep your eye on the prize. One day out of the blue, my infuriating/endearing little guy literally started begging for roasted Brussels sprouts. Now, for the past few months, he can't seem to get enough of any cruciferous vegetables -- including broccoli and cauliflower. So bribery, schmibery. This is the mark of a healthy eating habit, and it sure was worth the wait.
Tamara Duker Freuman, MS, RD, CDN, is a registered dietitian whose NYC-based clinical practice specializes in digestive disorders, celiac Disease, and food intolerances. Her personal blog, www.tamaraduker.com, focuses on healthy eating and gluten-free living.
