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Bribing with Food: Why Using Food as Reward Harms Kids

Learn about bribing with food and food rewards, how some parents use them, and their value in raising good eaters in the short and long term.

It’s not unusual for parents to use a little bribe to get their child to eat at the dinner table or for good behavior.

In fact, food rewards (also known as bribing or incentivizing with a sweet or treat) are fairly commonplace in the parenting realm.

If you take another bite of chicken, you can have ice cream.

Try it, and I’ll give you a treat.

Be good and you can have a sucker.

Time and time again, parents do this in order to get their kids to eat better or to eat healthier foods.

Today, the value placed on healthy eating, from clean eating to trendy diets like Paleo or Keto, puts a lot of pressure on parents.

In this article, you’ll learn:

  • How parents may bribe with food to get their child to eat or try something new
  • The research on bribing your child with food
  • Why incentivizing eating with treats and sweets is not a good long term plan
A pink frosted donut. In bribing with food and using food rewards to get kids to eat.

What is Rewarding with Food, Exactly?

Rewarding with food is also called Instrumental Feeding in the scientific literature on feeding kids.

It is a feeding strategy used by parents to manipulate or control their child’s eating behavior and food intake through the use of rewards, or incentives, which can be food rewards (candy or dessert) or non-food rewards (ie, stickers, praise).

Why Do Parents Use Food as a Reward?

Whether you pressure your child to eat healthy food, try different kinds of foods, police his sweets and treats, or –yikes! — force him to eat, the desire to have your child eat healthy is a driving force.

The truth is, you’ve probably succumbed to bribing with food to entice your child’s eating, whether you like to admit it or not.

It’s a prevalent feeding practice and it’s done without thinking of the long-term consequences.

Why?

Incentives to eat are effective.

In the short term, anyway.

Typically, when you use food rewards you’ll see an immediate result: a child who eats more, tries new food, eats healthy food, or who has good behavior. 

In kids, the desire for sweets and treats is strong, so treat foods are easy incentives.

How Bribing a Child to Eat Affects His Eating Habits

My 15 year-old daughter and I got into the topic of healthy food for kids and getting kids to eat better. That conversation led us to the topic of using food as a reward.

I was mentioning the results of a 2010 study published in Appetite, about rewarding preschool children for trying new fruits and vegetables.

The results of the study showed that preschoolers ate more fruits and vegetables when presented with a reward.

This carried over to meals without a reward (they continued to eat more fruits and veggies).

Six months later the effects were still seen.

This was encouraging.

I was curious about my daughter’s opinion about bribing young children to eat.

I asked, “What do you think about rewarding kids with dessert, stickers or presents for eating their vegetables?”

She said, “That doesn’t work! When kids get older there’s not going to be anyone to bribe them with food, prizes, or stars. So kids will just not care about vegetables, because they won’t mean anything to them anymore.  Vegetables will still be on the list of things kids don’t like (and never did like) anyway.”

Interesting point.

According to her, bribing a child to eat is a lot of front-end work with little pay off in the long run.

Food rewards - Do they motivate children to eat healthy food in the long run?

Other Outcomes of Bribing with Food 

I looked into the research further to investigate what we can learn about food rewards.

My gut was telling me this wasn’t the whole story.

In fact, it turns out that food rewards aren’t so great in the long run.

In a 2016 study out of Aston University in the UK, researchers looked at children aged 3 to 5 years and the feeding practices their parents used.

The researchers followed up with these children at ages 5 to 7 years.

Their findings:

Children were more likely to be emotional eaters at 5 to 7 years if their parents had reported using food as a reward when they were younger. 

A 2017 review study in Appetite suggested, based on the evidence we have to date:

“…food-based rewards should not be used in order to make children eat everyday, well-accepted foods.” 

Using bribes like sweets may decrease the preference for the foods kids already like, and increase their preference for the reward food (sweet foods or “junk” food).

Using small, non-food rewards for kids (ie, stickers) may help children get over the fear of, or resistance to, trying a new food.

Since tasting a new food is required in the process of helping kids learn to like new foods, non-food rewards can incentivize children to taste them.

One study did show, however, that use of non-food rewards may undermine a child’s ability to develop a natural drive and motivation to try new food.

So, be careful if you use them.

If you sense it is back-firing, then adjust your course of action. Because even with the best intentions, using food as reward or a bribe, has many potential drawbacks.

I cover this in much more detail in my workbook, Try New Food, available here.

Food rewards and bribing children with dessert to get them to eat vegetables.

How Food Bribes May Impact Food Preferences

Incentives may get kids to eat, or get them to try, but does it get them to like what they eat?

After all, what you choose to eat as you age reflects what you like.

Take, for example, my hubby. He still doesn’t like many cooked vegetables, but there are some he will eat.

And guess what?  The vegetables he eats are the ones that he likes!

Some people will eat vegetables for their health properties (me), but not all people roll that way. In my experience, kids are more like my husband than they are health-conscious adults.

While you may think that bribing your child to take bites of nutritious foods is the path to a healthy diet, the reality is it probably doesn’t work this way.

What does work for long-term liking is building in frequent exposure to new foods without pressure to eat them.

And remember what the study above found.

Using food rewards, especially sweets and treats, may change the food hierarchy in a child’s mind, and disturb their child’s healthy relationship with food.

Keeping Perspective on Kids’ Eating

Using food as a reward mostly comes from a good place: parents want to build more variety and have their kids eat well.

Because they really want to raise a healthy eater.

Parents hear the message: Increase exposure to vegetables and you’ll get your child eating them before you know it.

I think the word ‘exposure’ has been misinterpreted to mean “get them to eat it.”

Correction: Food exposure is smelling, seeing, licking, tasting, chewing, touching…not necessarily eating.

Second, my daughter’s perspective reminded me that we disregard how kids might feel and the long term consequences when food rewards are used.

Kids may feel good initially (food rewards generally elicit excitement), but their “scooby-sense” may go on high alert.

They may perceive these bribes as manipulative and look for a way out, or maneuver in ways that increase the ante.

(Give me more if you want me to eat that!).

What my daughter was getting at is this:

If you want kids to eat something, they need to like it. When a child likes something, she will eat it on her own, without rewards.

In other words, she’ll be internally motivated to eat, and not reliant on exterior motivators like a special treat or other food bribes.

Rewarding Kids So They Eat Vegetables

Are you getting your child to eat their green vegetables using food bribes?

Or are you taking a different route and working for the long term payoff of having your child like vegetables?

There are many routes to getting a child to like vegetables.

Patience, understanding that it takes time to like them, repeated and neutral exposures, role modeling, enhancing their flavor, and varied preparation methods can get your child on the road to eating a wide variety of vegetables, eventually. And, avoid power struggles.

What do you think?

Does bribing your child to eat work for you (and your child) or not?

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Originally published in 2013. Updated May 2020.

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Jill Castle, MS, RD

I like empowering parents to help their children and teens thrive at every size with realistic advice centered on healthful habits around food, feeding, nutrition and health behaviors. As a pediatric dietitian and author, my goal is to share strategies and realistic advice to help you raise a healthy and happy child through my articles and podcast.