Children Food Neophobia - a Playful Intervention at a Kindergarten

Food neophobia, understood as the rejection of novel foods, is considered one of the biggest barriers to the consumption of fruits and vegetables in preschool children. Some factors like food preferences, gender, genetic characteristics, psychological factors and family factors are also crucial for the acceptance of vegetable in childhood. Some strategies used to modify food preferences of children are repeated exposure and the use of rewards. The aim of this project is to investigate the efficacy of taste exposure-plus small reward in acceptance and consumption of vegetables among preschool children at school. In this context, interventions were attended at school to capture the influence of this environment towards consumption of vegetables among preschool children.

For this, the methodology applied will be a repeated exposure protocol by introducing small rewards to encourage children to taste an unfamiliar or dislike food. Child intake (weight or number of pieces) and liking (hedonic scale) will be assessed at baseline sessions and exposure sessions. Moreover, child's neophobia will be evaluated and additional determinants of child neophobia, such as child's eating behaviour. Quantitative data analysis will be performed by software IBM-SPSS Statistics®. In conducting this research is expected to achieve techniques to overcome neophobia in preschool children and promote vegetable consumption in school and at home. The results may contribute to improve food quality in childhood and consequently in adulthood.