[0:00]Hello, I'm Dr. Jonathan Calb and I'm a researcher here at the University of Cambridge. And my work focuses on improving the diets of children around the world. Today I'm going to talk to you about some of our research into how we can get children to eat more vegetables. Vegetables are really important for children's health, helping them to grow, boosting their immune systems and protecting them against illness. But despite this, most children in the UK and in many other countries don't eat enough vegetables. This can affect their health now, as well as increasing their risk of developing serious health problems in the future. One of the reasons that children don't eat enough vegetables is because vegetables are often bitter. And children are much more sensitive to bitter tastes than adults. In fact, children are born with an innate dislike of bitter tastes, which is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation to protect them from poisonous plants. On the other hand, children are born with an innate liking for sweet tastes, which are associated with safe, high energy foods. This difference in taste preference poses a real challenge for parents who want to encourage their children to eat more vegetables. So we set out to investigate whether adding a small amount of sweetness to vegetables could help children to eat more of them. To do this, we recruited 60 children aged four to five years to take part in our study. We chose this age group because they're at a key stage in their development where their eating habits are being formed. We presented children with two portions of vegetables. One portion was served with a small amount of sugar added to it, and the other portion was served without any sugar. We asked children to eat as much of each portion as they wanted, and we measured how much they ate. We found that children ate significantly more of the sweetened vegetables compared to the plain vegetables. On average, they ate about 25% more of the sweetened vegetables. This suggests that adding a small amount of sweetness to vegetables could be an effective strategy to encourage children to eat more of them. However, it's important to note that this was a short-term study, and we don't know the long-term effects of this strategy. We also need to consider the potential downsides of adding sugar to vegetables, such as increasing children's preference for sweet foods. So while this strategy may be useful in some situations, it's not a magic bullet. And it's important to continue to offer children a wide variety of vegetables in different forms, both with and without added sweetness. In conclusion, our research suggests that adding a small amount of sweetness to vegetables can help children to eat more of them. This could be a useful strategy for parents and caregivers to encourage children to eat more vegetables, but it's important to use it in moderation and as part of a balanced diet. Thank you for listening.