When encouraging healthy eating, 'do' bests 'don't'

In the elusive struggle to encourage kids to make healthy food choices in the midst of heavy marketing for high calorie, sugary drinks and snacks, a new research analysis says it's best to tell them what they should eat rather than what they should stay away from.

This strategy could also be applied to your spouse, say the researchers, hailing from the Cornell Food & Brand Lab in the US.

In the research analysis, they poured over 43 published international studies involving nutrition messaging, be it positive or negative.

Negative messages, they concluded, work best on experts such as dieticians and doctors who, despite their expertise could be tempted to stray from healthy eating.

Meanwhile those who have less knowledge in the area will get more out being told what is healthy and why, say the researchers.

The findings will be presented at the Society of Nutrition Education and Behavior's Annual Conference 2015 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in the US.