Obesity Abstracts

Background: A diet based on fresh fruit, vegetables, and whole grains (‘FVG’) promotes healthy weight. However, few UK children consume the recommended quantity or variety. Dislike, especially for vegetables, is a major barrier to intake, and changing preferences is difficult. Our project will test effects of sensory food education in primary schools on willingness-to-taste (‘WTT’) FVG, as tasting is a necessary precursor of liking and dietary inclusion. Methodological pilots are currently ongoing, prior to intervention delivery.

Methods: Pilots are trialling a small-group WTT test activity. Children are free to taste (or not) from a selection of 10–12 FVG. They record their preferences with ‘emoji’ drawings. FVG selection has included some common items (e.g. bell pepper), but mostly more unusual items (e.g. buckwheat, Sharon fruit, candy beetroot), so that most children encounter novel FVG.

Results: So far, of 69 children tested from two very different schools (n=50, n=19), 46 tasted all samples. Only 10% of all FVG samples presented were left untasted. Children mostly enjoyed tasting. Enjoyment and WTT were independent of liking, which varied markedly across the group. Children rated by parents as reluctant to taste new foods mostly followed the general trend to taste most or all samples. We’ll present video recordings to demonstrate enjoyment.

Conclusions: Away from the emotion and pressure of the dinner table, in a fun group activity, children so far have been much more open to tasting FVG than expected. Ongoing work will clarify the robustness of this finding in a larger, more diverse participant sample. If this high baseline WTT is replicated in the main study participant sample, it would leave little margin for meaningful improvement post-intervention. Whilst challenging for the planned study, these (preliminary) findings suggest an interesting intervention approach to increase quantity and variety of children’s FVG consumption. Namely a personalised approach, based on extending the range of known-liked FVG, given existing palates/preferences:

1. Tasting – provide fun, non-intimidating opportunities to taste many FVG.

2. Variety – identify new liked FVG.

3. Reinforcement - encourage children to take pride in, and request, their new likes.

Keywords: Preference, vegetables, fruit, liking

Disclosures: None.