Abstract
Children’s eating behavior does not necessarily align with dietary recommendations, and there is a need for better understanding the factors underlying their food choices. The aim of this study was to investigate children’s self-reported reasons for accepting and rejecting foods. A questionnaire was developed with reasons based on prior research and in-depth interviews. A set of various food stimuli covering different types was evaluated by 106 girls and 99 boys aged 10–13 years by checking all reasons that apply (CATA) for either accepting or rejecting them. Results showed gender differences among reasons for both food acceptance and rejection, but also in liking and willingness to re-taste the stimuli. The most common reason for food acceptance was good taste in boys and curiosity in girls; for food rejection they were bad taste, bad smell and dislike of appearance in boys and bad taste, bad smell, dislike of appearance and texture in girls. Overall, boys liked the food stimuli more than girls and were more willing to re-taste them. Future research should focus more on the role of sensory properties in both acceptance and rejection, and the potential of children’s curiosity as a driver in tasting foods should be further explored.
Highlights
Dietary variety has been linked to nutritional status and is important for health [1].a recent Danish cross-sectional study showed that school children consumed insufficient amounts of fruits and vegetables, fish and dietary fiber, but an excess consumption of red meat, saturated fats and sugars [2]
Insufficient dietary variety is often linked to picky eating and food neophobia [3], but to promote healthy food habits, more knowledge is required about factors that determine food choice
Other reasons for acceptance resulted in additional categories: grandparents, good association with other food, liking, challenge, good experience in childhood, ideals and price/value and other reasons for rejection resulted in processing of food, dislike and fear
Summary
Dietary variety has been linked to nutritional status and is important for health [1].a recent Danish cross-sectional study showed that school children consumed insufficient amounts of fruits and vegetables, fish and dietary fiber, but an excess consumption of red meat, saturated fats and sugars [2]. Dietary variety has been linked to nutritional status and is important for health [1]. Insufficient dietary variety is often linked to picky eating and food neophobia [3], but to promote healthy food habits, more knowledge is required about factors that determine food choice. Fallon and coworkers have proposed four main reasons for rejection including distaste, danger, disgust and inappropriateness and four main reasons for acceptance of foods including good taste, benefit, appropriateness and transvalue [4,5], whereof some of the factors already appear during childhood [6]. Koivisto and Sjödén (1996) investigated reasons for liking and disliking foods in 2–17-year-old children and discovered that distaste was the main reason for disliking and good taste the main reason for liking specific foods.
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