Pizza, Burgers, Juices etc have a dedicated audience of all ages. Although a lot has been said about the disadvantages of junk food, we still include them in our cheat diet. But did you know, kids prefer natural food than processed foods?! Sounds quite a revelation, doesn’t it? A new study recently found that children find naturally made foods more palatable and safer than packaged foods. A study by researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Yale estimated, “Children rate foods they consider to be natural because of greater sense of taste, safety, and desire than the foods they manufacture.” levels”.
For this particular study, researchers surveyed the preferences of more than 374 adults and children in the United States. These people (subjects) were given apple and orange juices of different origins.
In one study, 137 children between the ages of six and 10 were given three types of apples — “one grown on a field, one grown in a lab, and another grown on a tree inside a lab,” ANI reports. , The same study was conducted on adults to understand and compare preferences according to age groups. After assessing preferences, it was found that both age groups preferred apples “believing they were grown on farms that those grown in laboratories”.
Similarly, in another study, 85 children (ages five to seven) and 64 adults were given four types of orange juice to taste. The ANI report further read, “One is said to have been squeezed in the field, about which there is no information, one has been allegedly removed and one is said to have been mixed with chemicals.” Here too, the participants preferred the one that was more natural.
After conducting both studies, the researchers noted that age is not a factor for taste and also suggested that “whether natural foods are good can be established at age five – and possibly even younger.” “.
The researchers concluded by saying that this study can be considered a first step towards understanding how to shift our preferences towards fresh and natural food, eliminating the consumption of processed food as much as possible.