Children Food Neophobia - a Playful Intervention at a Kindergarten

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

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.

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 tasted 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.

Children in the control group don´t receive an educative session. Before the study starts children are asked to eat a salad. After 9 weeks, all children in the 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.

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.

Child Food Neophobia Scale (Pliner 1994) - this scale is composed of ten questions, being answered by parents in a scale from one to seven, in which number one means "very similar to the reality of my child" and seven means "extremely distant to the reality of my child". This scale is able to evaluate child's food neophobia and child's food neophilia

Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (Wardle, Guthrie et al. 2001) translated and adapted for portuguese reality by Viana et al (Viana and Sinde 2008). This questionnaire is answered by parents to evaluate child's eating behaviour and is composed of 35 questions. In each question the answer is in a scale from one to five, in which one means "never" and five means "always".

Assessing intake of an unfamiliar salad served at lunch at three distinct moments: baseline (T0), immediately following intervention with the experimental group (T1) and ten weeks after (T2) (immediately following the intervention with the control group). This third evaluation will allow measuring the impact of the intervention at a longer period of time (Laureati, Bergamaschi et al. 2014)

Inclusion Criteria: children attending an educational institution Exclusion Criteria: children with cognitive impairment