Coulthard, H., & Sealy, A. (2017). Play with your food! Sensory play is associated with tasting of fruits and vegetables in preschool children. Appetite, 113, 84-90.

Question 1

study objective

Answer 1

To investigate whether tactile play with fruits and vegetables increases children’s willingness to taste these foods.

Question 2

methods

Answer 2

• Three to four year old pre-school children (N = 62)
• three conditions; sensory FV play, sensory non-food play and visual FV exposure.
• Parental report: child baseline liking of the foods used in the study, parental and child FV consumption (portions/day), child neophobia and child tactile sensitivity.
• Outcome measures were the number of fruits and vegetables tasted in a post experiment taste test which featured (n = 5) or did not feature (n = 3) in the task.

Question 3

results

Answer 3

• Analyses of covariance controlling for food neophobia and baseline liking of foods, showed that after the activity children in the sensory FV play condition tried more FV than both children in the non-food sensory play task (p < 0.001) and children in the visual FV exposure task (p < 0.001).
• This was true not only for five foods used in the activity (p < 0.001), but also three foods that were not used in the activity (p < 0.05).

Question 4

implications:

Answer 4

• Sensory play activities using fruits and vegetables may encourage FV tasting in preschool children more than non food play or visual exposure alone.
• Long term intervention studies need to be carried out to see if these effects can be sustained over time.