Pilot Study on Influencing Healthy Food Acceptance in Young Children Through Play‐Based Activities and Food Exposures

Healthy food consumed during early childhood provides the nutrients needed for physical health, cognition and learning throughout life. Current literature suggests the majority of American children do not consume a healthy diet, this is found to be especially prevalent in low income and minority communities. Published nutrition interventions attempting to change children's preferences have generally been successful in improving health knowledge but have had limited success in changing food consumption patterns. We developed a new intervention for improving eating habits of preschool children, specifically using play‐based activities to improve the acceptance of healthy foods by young children via repeated exposure and familiarity. Thirty‐eight predominately minority children, aged 2.9–4.2 years old, from two classrooms in a Boston early childhood education program are participating in a pilot study to test the new intervention. Half of the children are in the intervention classroom, which receives 8 weeks of food‐related activities and target foods substituted for usual classroom activities and foods. The other half are in the control classroom, which is an assessment‐only group with no intervention. The intervention activities are 20–40 minutes in length per day and focus on familiarizing children with the target foods through games, art, cooking, gardening and tasting. The target foods are green leafy vegetables, carrots, tomatoes, whole grains, berries, grapes, apples, and a fortified bar providing nutrients and phytochemicals anticipated to be beneficial for cognition. The study is currently ongoing. The primary outcome is food intake during snacks and lunch in the classroom, made at baseline and endline for both classrooms and during the intervention weeks in the intervention classroom. Additional outcomes include children's food preferences, height, weight, hemoglobin, carotenoids, and cognitive function. Programs that effectively facilitate acceptance of nutritious foods by young children are urgently needed and would have substantial value in improving the health and possibly also the cognition of American children.