Children Food Neophobia - a Playful Intervention at a Kindergarten
Condition: Preschool Children
MeSH terms: Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The aim of this project is to investigate the efficacy of taste exposure-plus small reward in
      acceptance and consumption of vegetables among preschool children at school. In this context,
      interventions were attended at school in order to capture the influence of this environments
      towards consumption of vegetables among preschool children. For this, the methodology applied
      will be a repeated exposure protocol by introducing small rewards to encourage children to
      taste an unfamiliar or dislike food. Child intake (weight or number of pieces) and liking
      (hedonic scale) will be assessed at baseline sessions and exposure sessions. Moreover,
      child's neophobia will be evaluated and additional determinants of child neophobia, such as
      child's eating behaviour
    

Detailed description: 
      Food neophobia, understood as the rejection of novel foods, is considered one of the biggest
      barriers to the consumption of fruits and vegetables in preschool children. Some factors like
      food preferences, gender, genetic characteristics, psychological factors and family factors
      are also crucial for the acceptance of vegetable in childhood. Some strategies used to modify
      food preferences of children are repeated exposure and the use of rewards. The aim of this
      project is to investigate the efficacy of taste exposure-plus small reward in acceptance and
      consumption of vegetables among preschool children at school. In this context, interventions
      were attended at school to capture the influence of this environment towards consumption of
      vegetables among preschool children.

      For this, the methodology applied will be a repeated exposure protocol by introducing small
      rewards to encourage children to taste an unfamiliar or dislike food. Child intake (weight or
      number of pieces) and liking (hedonic scale) will be assessed at baseline sessions and
      exposure sessions. Moreover, child's neophobia will be evaluated and additional determinants
      of child neophobia, such as child's eating behaviour. Quantitative data analysis will be
      performed by software IBM-SPSS Statistics®. In conducting this research is expected to
      achieve techniques to overcome neophobia in preschool children and promote vegetable
      consumption in school and at home. The results may contribute to improve food quality in
      childhood and consequently in adulthood.
    

Intervention name(s): Educative session
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): The experimental group receive nine educational sessions (one per week) about different vegetables and, at lunch time, they are exposed to a different vegetable. If they try it, they will receive a sticker. In each session, researcher will record their preference for the vegetable and the quantity that they consumed in a scale from one to three (1- the child prooved it; 2 - the child repeated it; 3 - the child ate all the quantity). In the end of 9 sessions, all children (experimental and control group) will receive the same salad that they had eaten at baseline and the procedure will be the same: the salad is weighted before and after the consumption of each child to verify the quantity of each one ate.
Allocation: Non-Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Other
Keywords: food neophobia; preschool; children