Title : The development of healthy eating habits from infancy into adulthood
Abstract:
Children’s vegetable consumption falls below current recommendations, highlighting the need to identify strategies that can successfully promote better acceptance of vegetables. Recently, experimental studies have reported promising interventions that increase acceptance of vegetables. The first, offering French and German infants a high variety of vegetables at weaning, increased acceptance of new foods, including vegetables. The second, offering an initially disliked vegetable at 8 subsequent meals markedly increased acceptance for that vegetable. So far, these effects have been shown to persist for at least several weeks (at 15 months) and several years (3 years). In this study, we present long-term follow-up data at 6 and 18 years obtained through questionnaire and experimental approaches. At 6 and 18 years, observations in an experimental setting showed that children who had been breast-fed and children who had experienced high vegetable variety at the start of weaning ate more of new vegetables and liked them more. They were also more willing to taste different vegetables than formula-fed children or the no or low variety groups. The initially disliked vegetable was still liked by 57%, and 65% of children, respectively.
This follow-up study suggests that experience with chemosensory variety in the context of breastfeeding or at the onset of complementary feeding can influence chemosensory preferences for vegetables into adulthood. It shows the effectiveness of breastfeeding, early experiences with vegetable variety during complementary feeding, and of repeated experience with an initially disliked vegetable in promoting vegetable acceptance into childhood. The effects are long-lasting and provide the foundation for evidence-based recommendations to help parents promote healthy eating habits to their children.
