No dessert until you eat your vegetables!

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As a child I had a love of sweets. Well maybe not just sweets, but junk food more generally. In fact one year I begged Santa for a bottle of ketchup at Christmas. Needless to say I didn’t get. Thanks Santa=( Like many parents, my Mom and Dad struggled to get me to eat full, balanced, healthy meals. I poked, prodded, and scattered the brown rice, fresh fish, and local veggies. I made many valiant attempts to trick my parents into believing I had consumed enough of the healthy stuff so that I could finally get to the good stuff, dessert.

So what do parents, like mine, do when they are faced with a ding dong craving, pringles loving, child like me?  If we look to classic psychology theory for an answer, the results are mixed. Research on behaviorism  has shown that positive reinforcement – when a behavior is followed by the presence of rewards – makes the behavior happen more often. Applied to the green veggie quandary - when children eat the healthy parts of a meal, parents provide rewards (e.g. smiles, stickers, or simply cold hard cash). If the theory is correct this will increase the likelihood the child will eat more healthy foods in the future.

This idea has been challenged by another line of research, however. Self-determination theory suggests that providing extrinsic rewards actually undermines, or diminishes intrinsic motivation. Again, applied to the green veggie quandary, if parents reward children for eating the healthy parts of a meal, children will actually come to like those healthy parts less, and will only be motivated to eat them, in order to obtain the reward. Take away the reward, and the green veggies will stay on your child’s plate. So who is right?
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