Some people think of delicious and irresistible chocolate puddings or cakes when they hear the word dessert. For others, a sweet dessert means the prospect of obesity, heart attacks and diabetes. Therefore, many parents naturally wonder whether it makes sense for children to eat sweet desserts, as they could develop bad eating habits and pay the price later in their health.


There are various arguments to consider when deciding on the pros and cons of a dessert for children.

Most, or almost all, children find it difficult to eat a savoury meal, especially vegetables or fruit. They can poke at the plate listlessly for hours without taking a bite. Undoubtedly, a tasty dessert is a good bribe to eat the less favourite healthy foods. If the children know that there will be no dessert until the meal is finished, it usually works wonders. So the disadvantage of a sweet, high-calorie dessert is offset by the undeniable advantage of a healthy meal with fruit and vegetables.

A dessert that is popular with children doesn't have to be unhealthy. There are delicious yoghurts, fruit parfaits, baked apples or ice cream with pieces of banana. By trying them out, you can find lots of healthy alternatives that the children like. The main thing is that the children like the dessert and that it contains as many healthy nutrients as possible.

On the other hand, children can also acquire bad eating habits by being bribed with a dessert. For example, they learn that their carrot is a necessary but unpleasant evil before the reward, the dessert. In this way, children get used to the idea that healthy food is not tasty and not desirable, and this hardly gives them a good start to developing good eating habits.

In recent decades, the rate of overweight children has tripled. Obesity contributes significantly to the development of heart disease, bone and joint problems, sleep problems and, not insignificantly, low self-esteem. For children who are prone to obesity, parents should be more careful about feeding them sweets on a regular basis. Instead of enticing them to eat their vegetables by tempting them with dessert, they should rather try to make the vegetables palatable for the children.