It is often said that children eat what they like,
but the results of a new study suggests that when it
comes to meals, children do not eat what they
dislike. Researchers conducted an experiment
involving 61 children ages 4-6 years to assess the
relationship between their liking of foods in a meal
and subsequent intake. Children participated in two
identical laboratory sessions in the study conducted
in Keller's Children's Eating Behavior Laboratory in
the College of Health and Human Development, where
seven foods like chicken nuggets, ketchup, potato
chips, grapes, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and cookies
were included on a tray. Also included were two
beverages, fruit punch and milk. Before eating the
meals, children were asked to rate their liking of
each food on the following five-point scale - Super
Bad, Bad, Maybe Good, Maybe Bad, Good and Super
Good. After the children had eaten as much of the
meal as they wanted, the researchers weighed what
they ate and compared the results with what the kids
said they liked and disliked. The correlations were
striking. They revealed that when presented with a
meal, disliking is a stronger predictor of what
youngsters eat than liking. In other words, rather
than high-liking driving greater intake, study data
indicate that lower-liking led children to avoid
some foods and leave them on the plate. Kids have a
limited amount of room in their bellies, so when
they are handed a tray, they gravitate toward their
favorite thing and typically eat that first, and
then make choices about whether to eat other foods.
However, there was a strong correlation between
consumption and no consumption in this case and the
foods the children said they didn't like. Even at a
young age, children's food choices are influenced by
their parents and peers. They pick up on what is
said around the table about what foods are good, and
while that may not actually correspond to kids
eating them, they are taking it all in, and that's
affecting their perceptions of foods, So, it’s
important to be careful with assumptions about what
truly is driving their behavior when they sit down
to eat a meal. At a multi-component meal, rather
than eating what they like, these data are more
consistent with the notion that children do not eat
what they dislike, the researchers concluded. |