Food Choices and Preferences of Schoolchildren

Abstract

While other speakers have considered what children are eating and the nutritional implications, this paper will take a closer look at why children eat in the way that they do. Clearly food habits are shaped by many factors which limit the availability and acceptability of potential foodstuffs. But within this framework, humans also form strong, stable likes and dislikes for foods. Even among children as young as 4 years of age, Birch (1979~) has shown that preference rankings made at one time, are good predictors of rankings made up to 51 d later. Furthermore preference rankings made by pre-school age children are highly correlated with consumption (Birch, 1979b). How do children acquire such preferences and food patterns? Birch (1987) has proposed three non-independent forms of transmission. 1. Infants are born with genetically pre-programmed propensities for behaviour. - This would suggest that food patterns result from innate mechanisms. 2. Similar food acceptance may result from similar exposure to and expcrience with food across the generations. - The similarity of exposure is due to social constraints on food experiencc. Such constraints limit what foods children are exposed to and in what context exposure occurs. 3. Transmission of behaviour can result from direct social interaction among individuals of a social group. - In humans, this form of transmission frequently involves an individual who acts as an agent of socialization in the culture, transmitting cultural rules to the child. (Interestingly, Galef (1986) appears to have demonstrated that social interaction can modify learned aversions, sodium appetite and palatability in rats.) The relative strength of these factors is of considerable importance in trying to understand how people make food choices, particularly for those concerned with changing eating habits. However, there seems little doubt that these factors interact and on the basis of the information available it seems reasonable to concur with Pliner & Pelchat (1986) that, ‘The human omnivore is an animal that basically has to learn what to eat, with some universal genetic predispositions, but with little influence of genetic factors on individual differences in food choice and attitudes’. The sequence in which this learning occurs is sometimes described as a ‘career’ and naturally the relative importance of factors which impinge on the learning process vary over time. This paper will consider how children’s food preferences appear to develop and comment on some of the implications for nutrition education.