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Impact of early feeding experiences on later eating behaviour

Foods eaten by the mother, during pregnancy or whilst breast feeding, can affect an infant’s food preferences [1]. This effect is, however, weak compared with that which can be induced during the early stage of weaning onto solids. Weaning normally occurs between the ages of 4 and 6 months. There seems to be ‘window of opportunity’ at this stage, during which infants show a rapid exposure effect to those tastes and foods fed to them. This effect seems both to generalize; the more foods given, the more accepting the infant is of the new foods, and to have a long term effect; those infants fed foods in the early weaning period retain a preference for these and other similar foods in later childhood [2]. The early exposure effect explains the variation of food acceptance shown by infants from different cultures.

The exposure effect is not limited to tastes but also extends to textures. Food of a more solid texture is more likely to be accepted by those infants who have had early experience of this texture [3]; possibly by 6 months of age. This early experience also seems to have long term consequences for food acceptance in later childhood [4, 5].
 
It is especially important to establish food preferences in the fist year of life, because in the second year the infant enters a period of relative rejection [6]. New foods, as well as foods, which the infant has already experienced may be refused. These foods are rejected, it is thought, because of a visual mismatch between known foods and new foods (the neophobic response), and foods that the infant has experienced but which may change in their presentation. The number of foods experienced by the infant in the early exposure period therefore predicts the number of foods that will be rejected in the neophobic stage.
 
It is, then, important that infants are exposed during the first year of life to a range of tastes and textures, and that this exposure should be facilitated even if the child may be dependent upon supplementary nutrition.
 
  1. Forestell, C.A, Mennella, J.A. Early determinants of fruit and vegetable acceptance. Pediatrics 2007; 120:1247 – 1254
  2. Harris, G. Development of taste and food preferences in children. Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care 2008;11:315 – 319
  3. Blossfield, I, Collins, A, Kiely el al. Texture preferences of 12-month-old infants and the role of early experiences. Food Quality and Preference 2007;18:396-404
  4. Northstone, K, Emmett P, Nethersole F, et al.  The effect of age of introduction to lumpy solids on foods eaten and reported feeding difficulties at 6 and 12 months. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 2001;14:43-54
  5. Coulthard, H., Harris, G., Emmett, P. & the ALSPAC team. Delayed introduction of lumpy foods to children during the complementary feeding period affects child’s food acceptance and feeding at 7 years of age. Matern Child Nutr 2009;5:75-85

Mason, S.J, Harris, G, Blissett, J. Tube feeding in infancy: implications for the development of normal eating and drinking skills. Dysphagia 2005;21(1):46-61

 
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