Reasons for rejection of food items in Swedish families with children aged 2-17.
The aims of the study were to investigate family members' reasons for rejection of foods served in the family, the reasons for not serving specific foods, children's reasons for liking/disliking foods and the use of parental mealtime practices to encourage child eating. Also, the relationships between child/parental neophobia and (1) the reasons for not serving specific foods and (2) the use of mealtime practices were studied. A group of randomly selected families (n = 370) with children aged 2-17 years from two Swedish towns (stratified, 185 from each) were invited and 57 participated. The results are based on an ad hoc food-frequency questionnaire, a mealtime-practices questionnaire, the Food and Neophobia Scale (Pliner & Hobden, 1992), parental ratings of child food neophobia and on a child interview. The main reason for family members rejecting the foods and the main reason for children's dislikes was "distaste". The most frequent reason for children's likings was "good taste". The most frequent reasons for not serving the specific foods were "distaste", the "food did not occur to me", "seasonal/availability" and "habit". The mothers' total Food Neophobia score was significantly correlated with "did not occur to me". Parental ratings of child food neophobia were significantly correlated with mealtime-practice factors "postpone meals" and "child decides portion".
Koivisto
U K
UK
Centre for Caring Sciences, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Sjödén
P O
PO
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003296:Cooking; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005518:Food Preferences; D006801:Humans; D012621:Seasons; D013548:Sweden; D013649:Taste