0000000000464759
AUTHOR
Abigail Pickard
Spilling the beans: The development of conceptual knowledge about food and its links with food rejection in young children (3-7-years-old)
Insufficient dietary variety in children leads to significant nutrient deficiencies and health issues, both in childhood and later life (DeCosta et al., 2017). Cognitive mechanisms, such as categorization and conceptual knowledge, play an important role in understanding and appropriately accepting or rejecting foods (Mura Paroche et al., 2017). The food domain lends itself to many concepts and categories, such as taxonomic (i.e., lamb is meat), thematic (i.e., lamb goes on a plate), or script (i.e., lamb is eaten at dinner). Such knowledge aids accurate recognition, understanding, and appropriate interaction when confronted with foods situated in context. If conceptual knowledge is underdev…
Strawberries and Cream: The Relationship Between Food Rejection and Thematic Knowledge of Food in Young Children
Establishing healthy dietary habits in childhood is crucial in preventing long-term repercussions, as a lack of dietary variety in childhood leads to enduring impacts on both physical and cognitive health. Poor conceptual knowledge about food has recently been shown to be a driving factor of food rejection. The majority of studies that have investigated the development of food knowledge along with food rejection have mainly focused on one subtype of conceptual knowledge about food, namely taxonomic categories (e.g., vegetables or meat). However, taxonomic categorization is not the only way to understand the food domain. We also heavily rely on other conceptual structures, namely thematic as…