6533b7d0fe1ef96bd125a393

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Determining Factors and Critical Periods in the Formation of Eating Habits: Results from the Habeat Project

subject

description

Un article correspondant à cette présentation devrait paraître en 2017 dans Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism.Un article correspondant à cette présentation devrait paraître en 2017 dans Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism.; Eating habits form early during childhood and are likely to track until the beginning of adulthood. Thus, understanding the formation of eating habits is important. In the HabEat* project we focused on the development of preferences for vegetables since they are the less liked foods for children. Based on the analyses of data from different European cohorts, HabEat found that breast milk may facilitate the consumption of vegetables in later childhood. HabEat found some evidence that introducing a variety of different vegetables in the complementary feeding period increases later acceptance of novel foods. Habeat also found that repeated exposure is as much or more efficient than flavour-flavour learning to increase vegetable intake even for 2- to 6-year-old children who are more likely to be neophobic. Food intake adjustment in young children (aged 3 to 6 years) was also studied. HabEat found that when children ate a preload of energy-dense food less than one hour before a meal, they ate less during the meal but adjusted their food intake only partially for the energy ingested from the preload. HabEat found that when palatable foods were available freely after a meal, most children ate in the absence of hunger and consumed extra energy, and the extra-consumption was higher for children whose parents who used ‘Food as a reward' than for children whose parents did not use this practice. * The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/ 2007-2013) under the grant agreement n.FP7-245012-HabEat.