14 - The effect of context on children's eating behavior

Abstract

Contextual factors may have a strong impact on food perception and liking, especially when children are involved in behavioral, sensory, and consumer testing. In this chapter, we report and critically discuss the findings from earlier and recent studies dealing with food context and its effect on children's (age 3–18years) food perception, liking, and selection, with a specific and in-depth analysis of the following factors: the meal (i.e., portion and container size, food variety, appropriateness of eating occasion); the physical environment (i.e., laboratory vs. realistic settings); and the social environment (i.e., social influence and modeling). Attention is also devoted to the analysis of age- and gender-related differences in the effect of contextual factors on children's eating behavior. Studying the contextual factors related to food consumption among children could provide a deeper understanding of their thoughts and expectations about food and food settings, and could help in finding solutions to increase the acceptance of target products (e.g., fruits and vegetables), thus contributing to improvement of children's health, and to reducing food waste, which is a critical issue, especially in institutional contexts, such as school.