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Want your children to eat veggies? Keep it simple. Children prefer steamed or boiled vegetables because they retain their original taste, colour and crunchiness, say Dutch researchers.

Nutrition nugget

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Simply veggie

Want your children to eat veggies? Keep it simple. Children prefer steamed or boiled vegetables because they retain their original taste, colour and crunchiness, say Dutch researchers, after testing two commonly eaten vegetables — carrots and french beans — cooked in six different ways for four and 12 year olds. The carrots and beans were mashed, steamed, boiled, stir-fried, grilled and deep-fried. A control group of 18-25 year-old adults were also served the vegetables prepared in the same methods. Each time, children went for the steamed and boiled veggies.

Cancer concern

Eat and drink right

A woman may not be able to change her family history of breast cancer, but she can lower the risk by eating more vegetables, whole grains and drinking

less alcohol. There is an 11 per cent lower risk of breast cancer among women in the highest versus lowest categories of the prudent diet, report Irish researchers in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Drinking more than two glasses of wine, beer and spirits had a 21 per cent increased risk. While how a healthy diet lowers breast cancer risk is not well understood. Alcohol increases risk by pushing up estrogen levels. A higher lifetime exposure to estrogen has been tentatively linked to the disease.