Food Studies

Establishing healthy diets in children

In the final section of the VCE Unit 3 curriculum, Year 12 students developed an understanding of the behavioural principles that help establish healthy diets in children and nutritious meal patterns within the home. They examined data that shows most children do not consume the recommended daily serves of vegetables. Their task was to develop a food that could encourage greater vegetable consumption. 

Frittata: I chose to make a vegetable frittata for several reasons. The first was the fact it met the design brief requirement of containing 4 different types of veg, a crucial requirement. The second reason was due to the fact it was an appetising way to consume veg, unlike some of my options which were a lot more raw. I also chose to make it as it was a good snack meal, being able to be pre-prepared, then cut up and placed in lunchboxes, and have the rest stored for later. It was also a meal adults could enjoy, which ensured that modelling of good food behaviour could be done through consumption of the frittata.

~ Alex Herbert 

The rainbow pizza idea is the selected design. I feel that this is the most appropriate as it is also the most effective way of putting plenty of veggies while also looking appealing as there is lots of colour. The rainbow might be fun for kids to eat and therefore be a good way for them to enjoy eating vegetables. This meal could be made with the kids as they are likely to find it fun and then also want to eat their creation. 

~ Kayley Dridan

I decided to do both the baked sweet potato and carrot hummus, as to reach the 4 required vegetables. I served the hummus with the sweet potato, celery sticks and cucumber sticks, making those four different vegetables. I chose these food items to encourage children to adopt healthier eating habits because statistics show that only 20% of pre-school children aged 2-3 years old consume the recommended amount of vegetables daily, while approx. 95% eat the recommended fruit intake. This is because fruits appeal more to young children due to the sweet flavours. I thought that this specific food would be good because the texture of hummus is quite smooth and therefore would be tolerable for younger children. The sweet-potato is sweet, also therefore making younger children more likely to enjoy it. The cucumber and celery were slightly more crunchy, however this would be an introduction of another texture, perhaps for the first time, and repeated exposure to this new texture may lead to the enjoyment of these. In the end, the key thing that would encourage these younger children to adopt healthier eating habits would be repeated exposure, as well as seeing their parents eat it too; young children copy what their parents do.  

~ Jasmine Kennedy