As a child, Edgar van Mil once picked turnip cabbage from a farmer’s field near his hometown of Waalwijk. He peeled it with his knife and sampled the vegetable he hadn’t known existed until then. “I will never forget how it tasted, and every time I eat turnip cabbage, I am reminded of that moment.”

There is a good reason he shares this anecdote. The chair at Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo aims to study how we can help children eat a healthier diet. And it’s not just to help young people with obesity, like the patients Van Mil sees every week at the Jeroen Bosch Hospital in Den Bosch, but all children. Experiencing what you eat, much like Edgar van Mil’s “turnip cabbage adventure,” can help. “When you take kids to see a vegetable grower’s farm - something we do here at Kokkerelli Kids University - they get excited. Vegetables are about much more than just nutrition; there’s a story behind them. This makes them taste good and possibly more palatable.”

Wrong stimulus

Born in Waalwijk, Edgar van Mil (1969) trained as a physician in Maastricht, and has always been interested in nutrition. Not only because it’s something we are always studying, but also because his father, Gerard van Mil, was a renowned pastry chef. “As a child, I really used to think I would follow in my father’s footsteps and have the same career. He wasn’t concerned as much about making healthy products as he was about creating a tasty product that triggered your sense of taste so much that one of these pastries would be enough. These days, there are products you can easily eat ten of. And this is where the problem actually lies. After all, it encourages people to eat even more.”

He sees the consequences of this in his medical practice. “Initially, I concentrated on pediatric endocrinology and medical research, but so much involves eating habits, taste development and what this does to young children’s metabolism. We still don’t know enough about this, which is what makes this chair so interesting, and is the reason behavioral psychologist Remco Havermans is now involved as an associate professor.”

Read more on the Brightlands website.