Advice to parents about fussy eating usually arrives as information: a leaflet, a word about nutrition, an explanation of why vegetables matter. A trial put that against something far duller. 156 parents of two to six year olds picked a vegetable their child already disliked, then drew one of three groups: taste it daily for a fortnight, receive nutrition advice, or do nothing at all. Whose children changed?
Only the daily tasting worked. Children in the grew fonder of the , ranked it higher against other vegetables, and ate more of it, measured at a before and after. The information group, given nutritional advice and a leaflet, and the control group, given nothing, did not move on all three. Exposure was the only condition to shift every outcome.
Fruit and vegetable intake in preschoolers sits well below what is recommended, and the standard response is to tell the parent why it matters. This trial tested whether telling the parent does anything for the child.
A taste test first picked the target vegetable for each child, chosen because that child already disliked it. Then 156 parents of two to six year olds drew one of three groups. Exposure parents gave their child a taste of that vegetable every day for 14 days. Information parents got nutritional advice and a leaflet. Control parents got nothing further.
All three groups came back for a second taste test. Liking, and consumption of the target vegetable all rose further in the exposure group than in either of the others. And exposure was the only group showing significant increases on all three measures at once, which is a stricter bar than moving just one of them.
The mechanism is as plain as the method. Repeated tasting is how a preference gets learned, and a child needs the taste rather than the reason. Note the limits all the same. Fourteen days, a single vegetable, and outcomes taken at a taste test rather than at a family dinner, with nothing here about whether the liking survived the following month.
wat. A daily taste for a fortnight moved liking, ranking and how much the child actually ate. A leaflet moved nothing.
wat wat
It separates a parent knowing something from a child doing something. The advice group ended up better informed and their children were unmoved, which is the shape of most failed health messaging.
How do we know?
Wardle and colleagues randomly assigned 156 parents of two to six year olds to exposure, information or control after a taste test that picked each child’s target vegetable, with a second taste test afterward.
What is still unknown
Fourteen days, one vegetable, outcomes taken at a taste test rather than at the family dinner table, and nothing here about whether the new liking lasted.
Learn something?