This may be the most compelling case study for teaching your children early on about Ag.
A new study, sampling nearly 200 children ages 4-7 in United States, has found a significant percentage believe hotdogs, hamburgers, and bacon come from plants. Though, of course, they are children, the study shows a variety of other statistics that should be surprising and telling.
Published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, a team of psychologists asked children to categorize a range of foods, including cheese, french fries, bacon, popcorn, shrimp, almonds, and egg. The responses threw up a number of surprises, including that 47 percent of the 176 participants believed that french fries came from animals.
Cheese was commonly misidentified as plant-based, with 44 percent incorrectly identifying its origin. 41 percent believed bacon to come from a plant (we wish) and 40 percent said the same of hot dogs. Even chicken nuggets, which famously have chicken in their name, were misidentified as coming from plants 38 percent of the time.
“Popcorn and almonds were also commonly misclassified [as animal-based], each by more than 30% of children,” the team write in their report.
As well as assessing the children’s knowledge of the origins of foods, the team looked at what animals and plants the kids believed could and couldn’t be eaten. It appears that there is a lot of confusion about what is and isn’t edible, with the majority believing that cows (77 percent), pigs (73 percent), and chicken (65 percent) are inedible. Sand was considered edible by 1 percent, five times less than the amount who believed cat to be a type of food.
The study shows that there are a lot of misconceptions around food at this early age – but the team believes it could be an opportunity.
The team believes that part of the poor knowledge could be due to parents withholding knowledge about where meat comes from, believing it to be too gruesome for children to learn at such a young age.
“Rather than manage the inconvenience of cooking several meal options or confront the emotions that may come with the revelation that the bacon on their child’s plate was once a living, breathing pig, some parents instead skirt the truth altogether through vague terminology that has potentially lasting impacts on children’s eating habits.”
