title: [Food diversification and taste building].
abstract: Before the age of two years, children have very adaptive behaviors in the food domain: they feel pleasure to consume what is nourishing, are attracted by the smells with which they were familiarized in utero or during breastfeeding and are not picky. This period of openness is thus ideal to teach to the child to appreciate a wide variety of foods. Beyond two years of age, most of the children cross a normal phase of neophobia during which they are reluctant to appreciate unknown foods and vegetables. The most effective method to help them to exceed this phase of closure is to propose these rejected foods in a repeated manner. It seems moreover that the more the children would have consumed a wide variety of food during the phase of openness, the less they would elicit neophobia during the phase of closure.
authors.affiliation: Université de Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La-Défense, EA 4431, 92001 Nanterre, France. rigal.n@free.fr
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rigal
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D004032:Diet; D005502:Food; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D013649:Taste / Q000502:physiology*