Is Repeated Taste Exposure an Effective Strategy to Increase Vegetable Acceptance and Liking among Neophobic Tendency Children?

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine how repeated-exposure of an unfamiliar-vegetable affects food-intake and food-liking in the food-neophobic-tendency-children. A total of 848 children (9–11years-old) participated in this study. The experimental part of the study was carried out with a randomly-selected subsample of 28-students among the students who were considered as having food-neophobic-tendencies. These students consumed celery 8-times with an interval of 2 days. A 5-Point-Likert-Scale was used to assess students’ liking of celery during each trial. There was a significant effect of exposure shown by significant increases in intake and liking among neophobic-tendency-children (p < .001). In summary, repeated taste-exposure is confirmed to be a good strategy to increase vegetable-acceptance, liking in children, regardless of food-neophobia tendency.