WP2, sensory perception and food choice will uncover the role of individual sensitivity (the ability to perceive taste) in the development of children’s preferences. Sensitivity to the basic tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami) and fattiness show considerable individual variation, which could significantly influence food acceptability and intake. In this WP this will be…
WP3: Methods Development (of sensory perception and affective responses to foods) is a central WP in the project, as it will feed back to the other WPs in terms of methods application. It will develop age-appropriate data collection methods dealing with sensory perception, affective and emotional responses to foods, parenting feeding, and statistical methods to…
The current food environment is characterized by the wide availability of unhealthy products with high sugar, fat and salt content. This constitutes a major barrier for the development of healthy dietary patterns among children and preadolescents. In this context, WP4 “Healthy Food Product Development” will explore children-driven development of nutritionally optimized products, based on the…
WP5: Pleasure, satiation and overeating involves the study of perceptual mechanisms of taste and texture, and their role in the generation of food pleasure (liking) and in the development of satiation and food intake patterns in infants and toddlers.
The WP6 aims at studying the role of psychosocial factors (parents, other caregivers, siblings and peers) and of cognitive factors influencing children’s eating behavior. The influence of peers on children’s healthy eating will be studied in preschoolers as well as preadolescents. Social media marketing approaches will be tested. The influence of early food concepts on…
This work package is concerned with factors related to children’s eating environment and the food context. Children’s eating environment will be analysed as the overall context in which individual food choices take place and that influences the formation of healthy – or unhealthy – habits. The research done in this part of the project is…