🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
According to a new study, some American children seem to be a bit confused about the origins of many common foods.
In the study published in the December 2021 issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology, researchers asked 176 children to complete certain tasks that would test their knowledge about food.
One task asked the kids to identify a food and then answer whether or not they were plant- or animal-based foods.
Another looked to test the children's knowledge of "food edibility" and identify items that are deemed OK to eat and ones that are not.
All animal-based foods, with the sole exception of milk, were incorrectly sorted by at least 30 percent of the children. Chicken nuggets—a food with "chicken" in the name researchers noted—were misidentified by just over 38 percent as plant-based. On the other hand, when it came to french fries, almost 47 percent of the children in the study identified the fried potatoes as animal-based.
The 176 kids were between the ages of 4 and 7 and all lived in a metropolitan area in the southeastern region of the United States. The group was both racially and socio-economically diverse.
The researchers offered some explanation into why this confusion might exist among young children.
"One reason that children may exhibit confusion about animal-based food is because many parents in the United States are reluctant to talk with their children about the origins of meat," according to the study.
The researchers wrote that in addition to some parents' decision to not discuss the origins of animal-based foods—perhaps for reasons of wanting to shield children from the realities of meat production—another reason for confusion might be the trend in Western culture to disassociate meat from its animal origins.
"Because relatively few children in the United States witness the slaughter of animals, and because parents are vague in their explanations of where meat originates [either purposefully or because of their own unease], it is perhaps not surprising that children's food knowledge in this particular area is underdeveloped," the study explained.
The researchers also noted the impact of plant-based diets on the environment, saying that the trends noticed in the study could suggest that, unlike adults who have knowledge of the origins of the food they eat, children appear to be "naïve meat-eaters."
"The current study suggests that children eat meat unknowingly, and perhaps in violation of a bias against animals as a food source. Childhood may therefore represent a unique window of opportunity during which lifelong plant-based diets can be more easily established compared to later in life."
A 2018 Gallup Study found that 5 percent of U.S. adults considered themselves to be Vegetarian. Though the trend is more prevalent in younger adults finding that just 2 percent of adults aged 55 and older considered themselves vegetarian compared with 8 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds and 7 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds.
