Providing choice increases children’s vegetable intake

• Providing only explicit choice may increase young children’s vegetable intake.
• Sensory specific satiation has no effect on young children’s vegetable consumption.
• Context familiarity might be crucial for unveiling the choice-effect.

One hundred and fifty children between 4 and 6 years old were studied to examine the effect of providing them with a choice of vegetables on their vegetable consumption. Offering vegetable choice was expected to increase the children’s vegetable intake due to increased personal autonomy. The option for the children to choose the vegetables to ingest was varied across three different conditions. Within the discrete choice condition (DCC), children could choose the target vegetable at the beginning of the meal; within the continued discrete choice plus variety condition (CDCP), children were exposed to a variety of vegetables (zucchini and green beans), so that they could choose the target vegetable whenever they made a bite during the whole meal. Within the no-choice condition (NCC), children were alternately exposed to only one kind of vegetable, so that no choice possibility was provided. The choice conditions (CDCP and DCC) were associated with higher vegetable intake, in comparison to the no-choice control condition (NCC). No significant differences were found between the DCC and the CDCP regarding participants’ total vegetable intake. These results demonstrate the enhancing effect of providing choice to increase vegetable intake in young children. A higher degree of personal control and consequent level of intrinsic motivation is hypothesized to underlie the effect of choice availability.