title: The root of the problem: increasing root vegetable intake in preschool children by repeated exposure and flavour flavour learning.
abstract: Children's vegetable consumption falls below current recommendations, highlighting the need to identify strategies that can successfully promote intake. The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of flavour-flavour learning as one such strategy for increasing vegetable intake in preschool children. Children (N = 29) aged 15 to 56 months were recruited through participating nurseries. Each received a minimum of six and maximium eight exposures to a root vegetable puree with added apple puree (flavour-flavour learning) alternating with six to eight exposures to another with nothing added (repeated exposure). A third puree acted as a control. Pre- and post-intervention intake measures of the three purees with nothing added were taken to assess change in intake. Follow-up measures took place 1 month (n = 28) and 6 months (n = 10) post-intervention. Intake increased significantly from pre- to post-intervention for all purees (~36 g), with no effect of condition. Magnitude of change was smaller in the control condition. Analysis of follow-up data showed that intake remained significantly higher than baseline 1 month (p < 0.001) and 6 months (p < 0.001) post-intervention for all conditions. Children under 24 months ate consistently more across the intervention than the older children (≥24 m) with no differences found in response to condition. This study confirms previous observations that repeated exposure increases intake of a novel vegetable in young children. Results also suggest that mere exposure (to the food, the experimenters, the procedure) can generalise to other, similar vegetables but the addition of a familiar flavour confers no added advantage above mere exposure.
authors.affiliation: Bradford Institute for Health Research, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford Royal Infirmary, Bradford, BD9 6RJ, England, UK. Electronic address: sara.ahern@bthft.nhs.uk.
authors.forename: Sara M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Ahern
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 4DA, England, UK.
authors.forename: Samantha J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Caton
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, England, UK.
authors.forename: Pam
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Blundell
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, England, UK.
authors.forename: Marion M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Hetherington
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D004040:Dietary Carbohydrates / Q000008:administration & dosage; D004041:Dietary Fats / Q000008:administration & dosage; D004044:Dietary Proteins / Q000008:administration & dosage; D002149:Energy Intake; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005518:Food Preferences; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007858:Learning; D018517:Plant Roots; D012982:Sodium, Dietary / Q000008:administration & dosage; D013649:Taste; D006113:United Kingdom; D014675:Vegetables
chemical_list: D004040:Dietary Carbohydrates; D004041:Dietary Fats; D004044:Dietary Proteins; D012982:Sodium, Dietary
keywords: Learning; Preschool children; Repeated exposure; Vegetable intake