Promoting children's healthy eating in obesogenic environments: Lessons learned from the rat.
- PubMed: 21620880
Abstract
Current statistics on children's eating patterns and obesity rates are consistent with the idea that genetic taste predispositions, traditional feeding practices, and the obesogenic environment combine to increase the likelihood of unhealthy outcomes in many individuals. In this paper, we focus on one particular level of analysis through which this unhealthy combination of factors may begin to be disassembled: children's learning about food and flavors. Much of the research on children's learning about food and flavors has been inspired by the animal literature, which has a long history of carefully controlled studies elucidating the mechanisms through which rats and other animals learn to prefer and avoid foods and flavors. This literature provides many clues as to the processes by which learning paradigms may be used to encourage the intake of healthy foods, altering the implicit learning of obesogenic eating patterns that is likely to occur without intervention in the current environment. Overall, the implications of the literature are that children should be repeatedly exposed to a variety of flavors early in life, and that new flavors should be paired with already-liked flavors and positive contexts. This message is consistent with recent research results from our laboratory, showing that familiarization and associative learning paradigms may be used to increase young children's acceptance of, preference for, and intake of previously-unfamiliar, healthy foods.
Promoting children's healthy eating in obesogenic environments: Lessons learned from the rat.
Promoting children’s healthy eating in obesogenic environments: Lessons
learned from the rat
Leann L. Birch, Stephanie Anzman-Frasca
PII: S0031-9384(11)00267-8
DOI: doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.05.017
Reference: PHB 9495
To appear in: Physiology & Behavior
Received date: 26 January 2011
Revised date: 29 April 2011
Accepted date: 4 May 2011
Please cite this article as: Birch Leann L., Anzman-Frasca Stephanie, Promoting chil-
dren’s healthy eating in obesogenic environments: Lessons learned from the rat, Physiol-
ogy & Behavior (2011), doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.05.017
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Healthy Eating in Obesogenic Environments 1
Promoting Children’s Healthy Eating in Obesogenic Environments:
Lessons Learned from the Rat
Leann L. Birch, Ph.D., & Stephanie Anzman-Frasca, M.S.
The Center for Childhood Obesity Research,
The Pennsylvania State University
Corresponding author: Leann L. Birch
The Center for Childhood Obesity Research
The Pennsylvania State University
129 Noll Laboratory
University Park, PA 16802
Phone: 814-863-0053
Fax: 814-863-0057
Email: llb15@psu.edu
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