Establishing good dietary habits – capturing the minds of children

Abstract

Objective: To review the psycho-social research with respect to relevance for the development of nutritional education strategies. Results: The eating behaviour of the newborn baby is controlled by innate preferences and dislikes, and by biological self-regulation. These innate controlsystems are modified by learning processes, most importantly by the mere exposure to unknown food, by social influences, and by associating the physiological consequences of food intake with taste cues. The last decades have witnessed a change of the social meaning of food and eating, and the social context of eating is subject to dramatic changes. While on the one hand, prevalence of overweight and obesity is increasing, even young children deliberately practise weight control measures ranging from selective food choice to self-induced vomiting thus including behaviours which are clearly symptomatic of eating disorders. Such behaviour is motivated by unrealistic conceptions of a healthy body weight and shape. Children are interested in a range of nutrition topics. However, these topics have to be related to direct perceivable benefits from nutrition. Conclusions: Educational strategies should: firstly, focus on providing a variety of foods, including a range of nutrient-dense`healthy' food and encouraging children to taste it; secondly, provide a stable and predictive pattern of social eating occasions to promote the social meaning and importance of eating and to enable social learning of food preferences; and finally, encourage a positive body image by providing advice and reassurance regarding the range of healthy and acceptable body weights and shapes.

Longitudinal changes in diet from childhood into adulthood with respect to risk of cardiovascular diseases: The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study

“…The clear association between childhood intakes of fat and the consumption of vegetables and fruit and quality of diet 21 y later supports a childhood role in the development of food preferences (Perez-Rodrigo & Aranceta, 2001;Westenhoefer, 2001). Nutrition in early childhood may also have an independent influence on adulthood health (Viikari et al, 2002).…”

The effect of the type and quantity of sugar-beet fibers on bread characteristics

“…Not enzymatically degraded within the human digestive tract, fibers can have dietary role and can help in solving some digestive problems (Guillon, Auffret, Robertson, Thibault, & Barry, 1998;Wang et al, 2002). Food with high content of fibers causes hunger alleviating effect and, at the same time, does not cause binding minerals like calcium, magnesium and zinc (Stauffer, 1993;Westenhoefer, 2001).…”

BeKi – an initiative for nutrition education in children in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg: description, experiences, and considerations for an evaluation framework

“…According to review articles by Lytle and Achterberg (1995), Contento et al (1995;2002), and Hoelscher et al (2002) on evaluation results of nutrition education programs for children and adolescents, complemented by guidelines for (CDC 1996;Dixey et al1999) and studies of nutrition education in schools (Westenhoefer 2001;Pérez-Rodrigo & Aranceta 2001), successful nutrition education programs have the following characteristics : -They are based on an accepted theoretical framework model for behaviour change. -They are strongly related to behaviour and only weakly to knowledge.…”