A March 2012 study featured in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found kids will usually eat vegetables if they’re disguised in other foods.

Researchers at Columbia University enrolled 68 elementary and middle school children. They developed three foods for these kids: zucchini chocolate chip bread, broccoli gingerbread spice cake, and chickpea chocolate chip cookies. Researchers presented students two foods. One listed the food’s vegetable; the other didn’t. For instance, one label might read “zucchini chocolate chip bread” and the other simply “gingerbread spice cake,” even though the gingerbread spice (unbeknownst to the kids, because it wasn’t on the label) also contained broccoli.

The kids loved the bread and cake regardless of whether it had the vegetable label. In other words, even though they knew that bread had zucchini, they enjoyed it just as much as the unlabeled bread. The chickpea-labeled cookies, on the other hand, got huge thumbs down. And yet the unlabeled chickpea cookies proved a big hit. Is there a bias against chickpeas or maybe it’s that the kids had no idea what chickpeas were because they devoured the unlabeled cookies. It turns out that only 19 percent of the kids had chickpeas within the past year.

These findings show that if you hide vegetables into dessert, the sweetness will overpower any vegetable-y taste and kids will probably eat it. The study also shows kids are less likely to choose unfamiliar foods.

Advice from the rogue nutritionist

I’m all for kids getting their vegetables any way they can, but I’m not sure if loading spinach into a chocolate chip cookie proves the healthiest way. What if we just made vegetables taste better and even fun? For one, serve vegetables fresh. There’s a world of difference between frozen packaged and fresh spinach, for instance, and kids pick up on it right away. Two, add some good fats like butter or olive oil to the vegetables. They’ll taste much better, and the fat will help your kids absorb the fat-soluble nutrients like beta-carotene and vitamin D.

Here are some vegetable ideas I practically guarantee your kids will love, no disguising required:

• Fresh broccoli with butter
• Spinach sautéed in coconut oil and garlic
• Baked sweet potato fries
• Brussels sprouts with nitrate-free bacon and olive oil
• Sliced zucchini and squash fries
• Spaghetti squash with pesto
• Sliced zucchini and squash “breaded” with almond flour