Food portion at ages 8–11 and obesogeny: the amount of food given to children varies with the mother's education and the child's appetite arousal

During childhood, the amount of food consumed, associated with adiposity and overweight risk, depends mainly on the amount of food that is served, especially by parents. This study focuses on the food amount served by parents (“Portion”), with two objectives: 1/to confirm (or not) its link with the food amount eaten (“Intake”) by their child; 2/to identify some of its correlates, i.e., maternal education, and child's appetite arousal. Five hundred and three French children aged between 8 and 11 years and one of their parents completed different self-administrated questionnaires online. Results indicated that Portion and Intake were highly correlated, and that mothers with lower levels of education gave larger portions to their child, especially if he/she had a high appetite arousal. Moreover, these mothers, compared to others, were more concerned by taste preferences and less by health with regard to their child's diet. Such differences in taste and health considerations may contribute to underlie the educational inequality in food portion size

Effects of front-of-pack labels on the nutritional quality of supermarket food purchases: evidence from a large-scale randomized controlled trial

To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank products by nutritional quality may explain its performance

Early determinants of food liking among 5y-old children: a longitudinal study from the EDEN mother-child cohort

International audienceAbstractBackgroundIdentifying the determinants of child’s liking for different foods may help to prevent future choices of unhealthy food.ObjectiveTo study early-life food-related characteristics associated with child’s liking for different foods at 5y with a longitudinal study.Design1142 5y- old children completed a liking test for “fruit and vegetables”, “meat, fish and eggs”, desserts and cheese. Data related to maternal food intake before pregnancy, infant feeding during the first year of life, maternal feeding practices at 2y, child’s food intake at 3y, and child’s food neophobia from 1 to 4y were collected prospectively from the mother. The associations between these factors and child‘s liking for each category of foods were analyzed using structural equation modelling.ResultsHigh food neophobia at 4 y was related to lower child’s liking for all food groups. Maternal feeding practices at 2y were associated with liking for dessert: negatively for the practices allowing child to control his/her own food intake, positively for restriction of child’s food intake for weight reasons. Moreover, child’s food intake at 3y was positively associated with child’s liking for “fruit and vegetables” as well as for cheese. Finally, adherence to the infant feeding pattern “long breastfeeding, later introduction of main meal components and use of home-made products” was positively associated with child’s liking for meat/fish/eggs.ConclusionsFor all food groups, food neophobia was a common determinant of child’s liking for food at 5y, whereas other factors were associated with food liking for specific food groups

La naissance du goût

non précis

Rigal N., Frelut M.L., Monneuse M.O., Hladik C-M. , Marez A. , Pasquet P., & Simmen B. (2003). Neophobia, food preferences and taste thresholds in obese adolescents during a weight reduction program. Communication orale, 12th European Congress for Obesity (ECO), Finlande, Helsinki, 29st may - 1st june 2003.

en collaboration avec Frelut M.L., Monneuse M.O., Hladik C-M. , Marez A. , Pasquet P., & Simmen B

Effect on repeated exposures, temperament and parental food styles on liking for a new product

en collaboration avec Rubio, B, Vallet, N