Originally published 2021-11-14.
A 2021 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology asked 176 American children aged four to seven to sort everyday foods into "from plants" and "from animals". Many got the meat questions wrong: about 41% put bacon in the plant group, about 40% did the same with hot dogs, and 38% thought chicken nuggets came from plants. Headlines turned this into "kids think hot dogs are vegetables", which is catchier than the study itself. What the research really shows is that young children often do not connect the meat on their plate with the animals it comes from.
Here is how the study worked, what the numbers mean, why meat is a tricky concept for small children, and simple ways parents can help.
How the study worked
The researchers, a team of US psychologists, interviewed children from an urban area of the south-eastern United States. Each child was shown a series of familiar foods and asked to place them into one of two categories: plant-based or animal-based. In a separate task, the children were shown animals, plants and other items and asked whether each one was "OK to eat" or "not OK to eat".
A smaller follow-up with 78 children aged six and seven checked whether the older children did better. They did, by a clear margin, though even they did not fully grasp the idea of animals as food.
One small correction to some early coverage: the main sample was 176 children, not 175.
The results, food by food
Reports on the paper, including coverage in ScienceAlert and IFLScience, gave these headline figures for the main group:
- French fries: 47% said they came from animals.
- Cheese: 44% said it came from plants.
- Bacon: 41% said it came from plants.
- Hot dogs: 40% said they came from plants.
- Chicken nuggets: 38% said they came from plants, despite the animal's name being in the food's name.
- Popcorn and almonds: each was placed in the animal group by more than 30% of children.
The edibility task was just as revealing. Around 77% of the children said cows were not OK to eat, 73% said the same of pigs, and 65% of chickens. Only about 1% thought sand was edible, but roughly five times as many said a cat was.
Mistakes ran in both directions. Children were not simply guessing "plant" for everything; they also labelled potatoes and nuts as animal products. Their confusion was about food origins in general, but it was sharpest for meat.
Why meat origins are hard for young children
The authors and the journalists who covered the work offered several explanations, none of them a sign that children are foolish.
Processed foods hide their source. A nugget, a sausage or a rasher of bacon looks nothing like a chicken or a pig. A carrot, by contrast, looks like a carrot whether it is in the ground or on a plate.
Fewer children see farms. Most families no longer live on or near working farms, so children rarely see where meat, eggs or milk start out.
Adults soften the story. The researchers suggested that some parents avoid explaining slaughter in order to protect their children's feelings, using vague language about where meat comes from.
Production is abstract. A young child may think a cow "makes" hamburgers the way a tree makes apples, without realising the animal itself becomes the food.
Children love animals. Many young children see cows, pigs and chickens as friends from picture books, and resist the idea that they are food. The researchers argued this attitude tends to fade as children grow up and absorb their culture's norms.
What the study does not show
A few common misreadings are worth clearing up.
- "40% of US children think hot dogs are vegetables." The study asked about plant versus animal origin, not about vegetables, and it covered 176 young children in one region. It cannot be scaled up to every child in the country.
- "Kids today know nothing about food." Four-year-olds have always had gaps in their knowledge. The study found that understanding improved noticeably between ages four and seven, which is exactly what you would expect as children learn.
- "Parents are lying to their children." The researchers raised parental reticence as one possible explanation, not a proven cause.
It is also fair to note that the authors framed their work around climate change. They described young children as "naïve meat eaters" and argued that childhood could be a good time to build habits that reduce environmental impact, such as eating more plant-based foods. That is the authors' interpretation and recommendation, not something the sorting task itself measured, and advocacy groups promoted the findings with that framing.
How parents and teachers can help
Knowing where food comes from helps children make sense of nutrition, cooking and the natural world, whatever a family decides to eat. Some easy ways to build that knowledge:
- Trace a meal together. Pick tonight's dinner and follow each ingredient back to its source: bread to wheat, fries to potatoes, cheese to milk to cows, bacon to pigs.
- Use the shop as a classroom. In the supermarket, ask children to guess which aisle items came from plants and which from animals, then check the labels together.
- Grow something. Even a pot of herbs or a bean on a windowsill shows how plant foods begin.
- Visit a farm or market. Seeing animals and talking to the people who raise them makes the connection concrete.
- Answer honestly at the child's level. Simple, calm facts usually go down better than evasion, and they let children form their own views as they grow.
The bigger picture
The study is small, but it highlights something many parents will recognise: modern food arrives in packages and shapes that hide its origins, and young children fill the gaps with their own logic. A few conversations at the dinner table can close those gaps quickly, and give children a clearer, more grounded understanding of what they eat.
Sources: Journal of Environmental Psychology (2021), original paper; ScienceAlert: A surprising number of kids in the US think hot dogs are vegetables; IFLScience: 40 percent of American kids think hot dogs and bacon are plants; earlier coverage by Futurism.
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