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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The role of sensory pleasure in driving eating behaviour in infants and children

subject

description

Revue; Eating is essential for survival, and we are born well equipped to ensure proper food ingestion. However, learning to eat has to occur quickly, because the mode of feeding evolves dramatically during the first years of life, from tube feeding to family foods, through milk and complementary feeding. Moreover, food likes and dislikes are not inborn, except the enjoyment of the sweet taste: food preferences are learned, essentially during the first years of life. Eating habits established during early years will contribute to the development of subsequent eating habits. For this reason, it is fundamental to understand the most important early periods for the development of eating habits and the drivers of this development. The role of pleasure in eating is central, especially during childhood when cognitive drivers of food choices may be less prominent than during later stages in life. We will describe that food sensory properties, food rewarding properties and context of eating contribute to drive eating in the youngest and contribute to learnt preferences through experience. The learning process of food likes may start during pregnancy and lactation, through the exposure of the infant to flavours from the mother’s diet. Beyond these first flavour discoveries, the most important phase for learning to eat is likely to be the transition from milk feeding to a diversified diet, i.e. the beginning of complementary feeding. At this moment, infants start to discover the sensory (texture, taste and flavour) and nutritional properties (energy density) of the foods that will ultimately compose their adult diet, and parents are still in charge of providing appropriate foods, timing, context for eating. Infants learn concurrently food taste and energy density, which contribute to shape their ability to control food intake, from a qualitative and quantitative point of view.