I stumbled upon the idea of marketing food to your kids a few years ago, but didn’t realize that this was the subject of active academic research until quite a bit later.

Imagine my surprise when some of the tried and true French approaches to kids’ food education were the subject of sophisticated studies by leading American academics! They’ve proven what my French mother-in-law already knew: that positive marketing messages can convince kids to like healthy foods.

One of my favourite researchers on this topic is Brian Wansink, who is a Professor of Consumer Behaviour (how fun is that?) at Cornell University. Here’s a fun article published last month on the Huffington Post on Wansink’s insights into kids’ food.

Marketing food to your kids is the topic of an entire chapter of my new book Getting to Yum. I found it worked like a charm with my kids! Here’s a feature article published this week on some of the key tips and strategies for parents. Spoiler alert: for younger kids, positive marketing requires parents to be a bit silly! But that’s part of the fun…