Chair Youth, Food & Health, Institute for Food, Health, & Safety by Design, Maastricht University Campus Venlo, the Netherlands.
Chair Youth, Food & Health, Institute for Food, Health, & Safety by Design, Maastricht University Campus Venlo, the Netherlands.
Appetite. 2023 May 1;184:106513. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2023.106513. Epub 2023 Feb 26.
Children learn to accept novel foods by repeated exposure to these foods. In the current study, we investigated in toddlers whether a contingency management program (The Vegetable Box), comprising repeated vegetable taste exposure with contingent non-food rewards, is particularly potent at increasing recognition of and willingness to try vegetables. A total of 598 children (1-4 years old) recruited at 26 different day-care centres in the Netherlands took part. The day-care centres were randomly assigned to one of three conditions ('exposure/reward', 'exposure/no reward', or 'no exposure/no reward'). At the start and directly after the 3-month intervention period, all children were asked to identify various vegetables (recognition test; max score = 14) and whether they would like to taste and consume 1 or 2 bite-size pieces of tomato, cucumber, carrot, bell pepper, radish, and cauliflower (willingness to try test). Data were analysed with linear mixed-effects regression analyses (for recognition and willingness to try separately) with condition and time as independent variables, and adjusting for day-care centre clustering. Vegetable recognition significantly increased in both the 'exposure/reward' and the 'exposure/no reward' group, relative to the 'no exposure/no reward' control group. The willingness to try vegetables only increased significantly in the 'exposure/reward' group. Offering vegetables to children at day-care centres significantly increased toddlers' ability to identify various vegetables, but rewards contingent upon tasting vegetables appear particularly effective to also increase children's willingness to try (i.e., taste and consume) different vegetables. This result corroborates and strengthens previous findings demonstrating the efficacy of similar reward-based programs.
儿童通过反复接触新食物来学习接受新食物。在目前的研究中，我们调查了幼儿是否通过重复的蔬菜味觉暴露和 contingent 非食物奖励的 contingency 管理计划（蔬菜盒）特别有效地增加了对蔬菜的识别和尝试意愿。共有 598 名儿童（1-4 岁）在荷兰 26 个不同的日托中心参加了研究。日托中心被随机分配到三种条件之一（“暴露/奖励”、“暴露/无奖励”或“无暴露/无奖励”）。在开始和直接进入 3 个月的干预期后，所有儿童都被要求识别各种蔬菜（识别测试；最高得分为 14），并询问他们是否愿意品尝和食用 1 或 2 口大小的番茄、黄瓜、胡萝卜、甜椒、萝卜和花椰菜（尝试意愿测试）。使用线性混合效应回归分析（分别用于识别和尝试意愿），以条件和时间为自变量，并调整日托中心聚类进行数据分析。与无暴露/无奖励对照组相比，暴露/奖励组和暴露/无奖励组的蔬菜识别能力都显著提高。只有暴露/奖励组的尝试蔬菜的意愿显著增加。在日托中心为儿童提供蔬菜显著提高了幼儿识别各种蔬菜的能力，但与品尝蔬菜相关的奖励似乎特别有效地增加了儿童尝试（即品尝和食用）不同蔬菜的意愿。这一结果证实并加强了先前研究结果，表明类似基于奖励的计划具有疗效。
