Objective: To examine the contribution to fruit and vegetable eating in children of potential predictive variables within the domains of demographics, parental feeding practices and personality traits. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Questionnaires were distributed to parents through 22 London nursery schools. Subjects: Questionnaires were completed and returned by 564 parents or principal caregivers of 2-6-year-old children.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate two interventions (one reward-based and one exposure-based) for increasing children's acceptance of an unfamiliar vegetable compared with a no-treatment control. It was predicted that the exposure condition would increase liking for, and consumption of, the vegetable relative to either the reward or control group. Design: Using a randomized controlled design, participants were assigned to one of two intervention groups (exposure or reward) or to a no-treatment control condition, for a 2 week period. Liking for, and consumption of, red pepper was assessed before and after the treatment period. Setting: The study was conducted in three primary schools in London. Subjects: Parental consent was obtained for 49 out of a possible 72 children. Interventions: Interventions comprised eight daily sessions during which participants in the exposure group were offered a taste of sweet red pepper and told that they could eat as much as they liked. Participants in the reward group were shown a sheet of cartoon stickers and told that they could choose one of them on condition that they ate at least one piece of the pepper. Results: The exposure-based intervention significantly increased both liking (P ¼ 0.006) and consumption (P ¼ 0.03) compared with the control group. The outcome of the reward intervention was intermediate and did not differ significantly from the exposure or control conditions. Conclusions: Repeated exposure to the taste of unfamiliar foods is a promising strategy for promoting liking of previously rejected foods in children.

Children's food preferences are strongly associated with their consumption patterns. Identifying the factors that influence preferences is therefore crucial to the development of effective interventions to improve children's diets. Perhaps the most important determinant of a child's liking for a particular food is the extent to which it is familiar. Put simply, children like what they know and they eat what they like. From the very earliest age, children's experiences with food influence both preferences and intake, and research suggests that the earlier and broader that experience, the healthier the child's diet. Laboratory studies of children's food acceptance have indicated that repeated opportunities to taste unfamiliar foods results in increased liking and consumption. In order to investigate whether these results can be replicated in real-world situations, a series of naturalistic studies testing the efficacy of exposure-based interventions have been carried out. In a school-based study large increases in liking and intake of raw red pepper were seen in 5- to 7-year olds and two further studies, in which mothers used exposure techniques to increase children's acceptance of vegetables, achieved similar results. If future large-scale interventions prove to be successful, training could be offered to health professionals or directly to parents themselves.