Exploring Rural Children's Ideal Healthy Smoothie: A Visual Focus Group Study

Children can increase fruit and vegetable intake by consuming smoothies. However, most commercial smoothies contain excessive sugar due to the high proportion of apple juice within recipes. Including children, particularly those from potentially under-served communities, within the smoothie innovation journey is essential to develop healthier recipes that are also acceptable. Therefore, this study examined children's perceptions of healthier smoothie base ingredients using a visual focus group methodology (i.e., creative drawing tasks with group discussions) that we have recently adapted for the food and drink industry context. Children attending a rural primary school (n = 28; 60.7% male) completed drawings on their current smoothie drinking behaviours, their ideal healthy smoothie, and barriers to consumption. Smoothies typically contained strawberries, bananas, blueberries, dairy-based milk, and ice, as well as calorically dense ingredients (e.g., ice cream and chocolate). Children's ideal healthy smoothie contained fruit, ice and dairy-based milk, and the inclusion of vegetables, too many ingredients, a lumpy texture, and a large portion size were reported barriers. These findings highlight dairy-based milk, ice and whole fruit as potential ingredients for future product formulations, as well as the importance of co-creation and the effectiveness of visual focus groups as a method to elicit children's ideas.