Persuading Kids To Eat Proper Food

There’s a ton of press in England right now about our epidemic of obese children.  They’re all spending too much time on the internet, playing computer games, doing zilch exercise, and eating chips, pizza and sweets.

What’s this got to do with my sales-help crusade?  Well, an article in the Guardian I thumbed through recently mentioned a fascinating stat.  It sounds like worried dieticians ran ‘tasting sessions’ for children that turned their nose up at any food that wasn’t a tone of ‘brown’.

Perhaps by pitching it as a ‘you might like some stuff and find something new and cool, but then you might not’, it looks like they had success.  So much so, that after a few sessions, the guinea pigs were squabbling over who had the red pepper crudites first.

The researchers found that children take time to ‘accept’ a new taste.  The crying shame is, that most parents give up after the first, single attempt to introduce such healthiness.  You can picture it can’t you, ‘here’s some broccoli…. yum!’ says the mom, only for the kid to spit it out, never to be tried again, and even if they did like it, they wouldn’t let on.

Results showed worst-case anywhere between 10 and 14 tastes were needed to accept new food.

In the sales, or even sales management environment, how many of us would persevere this many times?  Keep re-presenting your ideas in a subtle non-threatening way, and glory will eventually come your way.