6533b850fe1ef96bd12a8137

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Impact of sweetness on children's eating behaviour: the roles of taste and calories

subject

description

International audience; The sweet taste is innately liked as shown in newborns. This attraction, confirmed in older children1, is interpreted in relation to the advantage conferred by the consumption of the energy of sugars. However, the impact of the taste and of the calories from sugar needs further clarification. Two studies will be presented, aimed at understanding the role of taste and calories from sugar in children from different age groups. The first study looked at flavor-flavor learning by pairing the taste of a vegetable with the sweet taste in 6-month-old infants. It shows that adding sweet taste is associated to a higher consumption of the vegetable in the sweet version but not with an enhanced acceptance of the basic version2. The second study looked at the influence of energy density conditioning on the liking for sweet beverages and on caloric adjustment after their consumption with 8-11-year-old children. During a 4-wk conditioning period, the children were exposed either two or seven times to two distinctly flavored, sweetened beverages: a high-energy version with sucrose and a no-energy version with sucralose. After a 3-wk period without exposure (stability), the children were exposed three times to both beverages, for which the association between the flavor and the energy density was switched (extinction). This study shows that after a repeated association between flavor and energy density, liking is driven by the flavor initially associated to the energy and caloric adjustment is driven by the energy density, regardless of the flavor. Further research will enable a more global understanding of how children learn to like, consume and regulate their ingestion of sweet foods and beverages. 1Lange, Schoumacker, Yuan, Nicklaus, Development of a questionnaire to measure attraction toward sweet, salty and fatty foods in children, in preparation. 2Remy, Issanchou, Chabanet, Nicklaus, 2013, Repeated exposure at complementary feeding to a vegetable purée increases acceptance as effectively as flavor-flavor learning and more effectively than flavor-nutrient learning. Journal of Nutrition. 143(7): 1194-200. 3Remy, Divert, Rousselot, Brondel, Issanchou, Nicklaus, 2013, Effects of energy density on the liking for sweet beverages and on caloric adjustment conditioning after exposure in children aged 8-11 years old. under review.