If your child would sooner eat an orange crayon than a carrot, this viral food hack is for you.
In an Instagram video with more than 9 million views, Utah dad Levi Jensen applies kid-friendly stickers to a variety of fresh produce. Next, he places the items in a bin for his 2-year-old daughter, Aria, who is ready for a snack. The toddler surveys her options before narrowing in on a red bell pepper adorned with Elsa and Anna from “Frozen.” After admiring the Disney princesses one more time, Aria bites right into the vegetable.
"Food marketers have known this for years and have used this to attract kids to highly processed foods," Levi captioned the reel, in part. "So why not use this to make healthier food options more attractive to our kids?"
Aria's mom Emily Jensen tells TODAY.com that the trick is a "super easy and affordable way to make eating nutrient-dense foods more fun and exciting for kids."
The couple credits a “Little Mermaid” sticker for changing Aria’s mind about cucumbers.
“She likes them now,” Levi says. "All it took was Ariel!"
Parents took to comments section to share their own experiences with stickers.
“Not even joking, I put Elsa stickers on the yogurts they didn’t want and all of a sudden my kids wanted them,” one person wrote.
Added another, “I do the same thing with my toddler. I’ve got a box of transportation vehicles stickers in the pantry.”
Other reactions included:
- “That’s why they made it illegal to sell food with (popular) cartoons in the Netherlands.”
- “My son picked out oranges with paw patrol on them the other day. He likes the fruit anyways but he insisted on them immediately.”
- "My daughter’s friend was given a hand me down bicycle. It was RED so she determined it was a boys bicycle and therefore didn’t want it. Her mom put kitten stickers on and it boom, she loved that bike!"
- "This also worked on the helmet my little guy never wanted to wear!"
- "My daughter was obsessed with Supergirl. I made a stamp and stamped everything with it. She hated beans until she saw they were Supergirl beans."
As researchers at the University of Ottawa found in 2023, cartoon characters really do influence children’s food preferences.
“We know that children are particularly vulnerable to the cute cartoon animals and superheroes that advertisers use to entice kids to pester their parents to buy food products,” Dr. Monique Potvin Kent, the lead author, said in a news release. "This study demonstrates the impact this marketing technique has on kids, and it’s not good news.”
In 2020, mom Jane Stine went viral on Facebook after she shared that stickers changed her 3-year-old son’s relationship with food.
“Here’s my best parenting hack. You know how kids always want Paw Patrol yogurt or Disney waffles or whatever?” Stine wrote. “Bring your own stickers to the grocery store and start sticking. Today we’re having Winnie the Pooh brand spaghetti squash. It goes perfectly with Toy Story broccoli.”