Is your child suddenly resisting 'chunky' foods?

We know how some children become fussy eaters after the age of two but now research has shown that some might unexpectedly start to resist certain textures in foods around the age of six.

A study by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food Science revealed that at about this age, children prefer smooth foods and avoid crunch. This includes pieces of fruit in their yoghurt, whole peanuts in peanut butter, berry pieces in jam and so on. But don’t worry – this is a phase that will most likely pass.

In the study, 76% of 6-year-olds showed a preference for foods without lumps.

Is this a protective measure?

According to Ching Yue Chow, a lead researcher, there may be an explanation for why children’s avoidance of complex texture in food peaks around the age of six.

“Food neophobia is often described as the reluctance to eat new or unfamiliar foods. It is thought to be a protective function to prevent children from eating potentially poisonous foods or other dangerous things when they start to become more independent. Studies have reported that food neophobia starts from a low baseline at weaning. It increases sharply as a child becomes more mobile and independent, reaching a peak at around 6 or 7 years old.

“As such, it makes sense that this particular group in our study does not like too many lumps in food, as it is at this age that they are most cautious when it comes to food,” explains Chow.

Children’s food preferences do mature with age and they become more willing to try new foods between the ages of 7 – 12 years.

Changing their tastes

Once children have passed the critical age of six, it may be time to encourage them to accept chunky foods. This means trying again and again to get them to accept the previously avoided foods – often up to 15 times.

“A lot of research on children and foods shows that repeated exposures to new dishes have a positive effect on whether they’ll bother eating them. Specifically, it is about giving children the opportunity to taste new food while there is something on the plate that they already know. Often they need to be presented with the new dish 8–15 times before they develop preference for it, but persistence pays off,” Chow recommends.

Try to resist the urge to offer rewards for eating foods they resist. “Rewarding a child with an ice cream if they eat their broccoli, is a very short-term strategy. Because the moment you remove the ice cream, they don’t want to eat the healthy foods. At the same time, you shouldn’t pressure a child or try to force them to eat certain things, because you risk that they will eat the new food even less than before because they associate it with something negative,” says Chow.

The new research results shed more light on the food preferences of children between the ages of five and twelve, which the researcher hopes can make parents and the food industry wiser about our relationships with food.

Article published in the Journal of Texture Studies (2024).

Image supplied by Freepix.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.