If you serve it, they will eat it—or at least that seems to be a take-away from a new study on healthy menu options published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Between 2010 and 2012, the Walt Disney Company experimented with kids' meal menus in 145 restaurants in its Orlando theme park, Walt Disney World. The company swapped traditional sides of fatty fries and sugary sodas with fruit or vegetables and low-fat milk or water. If parents wanted to go with the unhealthy standard fare, they simply had to “opt out” of the fresh meal items. But, according to the data analyzed by health researchers at the University of Colorado, around half of patrons didn’t bother and stuck with the healthy options.

In the time frame, 48 percent of guests were content with the healthier food sides and 66 percent of guests kept the healthier beverage option.

Together, those wholesome items reduced kids' meal calories by 21.4 percent, fat content by 43.9 percent, and sodium by 43.4 percent. And, Disney reported, the menu changes did not increase costs to costumers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity has more than doubled in children in the past 30 years or so. In 2012, 18 percent of children were obese, and a third of all children were obese or overweight. For adolescents, the numbers have quadrupled in that time frame, with 21 percent registering as obese in 2012.

Lead author of the study, nutrition researcher John Peters, thinks the finding suggests a win-win strategy for combating unhealthy eating habits. “While these results were obtained in a theme park setting they may have broader applicability and may encourage other restaurants to try the opt-out approach for making healthier choices easier for consumers,” he said in a press release.