It has been suggested that dietary recommendations should be tailored to regional conditions to bridge gastronomi, health and sustainability. The New Nordic diet (NND) has been defined as part of the OPUS project:”Optimal well-being, development and health of school children through a New Nordic diet”. The concept of the NND is to create a healthy diet based on locally produced Nordic products and high gastronomic quality. NND introduces many “new” components i.e. berries and vegetables not otherwise part of the typical Danish diet. Some of the berries and vegetables introduced in the NND are more dominant in bitter and sour tastes than what the children are used to. Thus, novelty and sensory properties of some of the new Nordic foods are likely to be the major challenges for the introduction of these NND components into the children’s diet.
The overall objective of this PhD work was to provide knowledge on acceptance of Nordic products in 9-11 year-old children. The studies conducted aimed to explore how to enhance the children’s acceptance of Nordic products, and secondly to investigate challenges to acceptance.
Several studies have demonstrated the possibility of changing children’s food preferences. In the first part of the project it was investigated how a five week intervention with Nordic foods and food engagement affected the acceptance of sea-buckthorn berry products, not included in the intervention. The effect of the intervention was compared to the effect of eight product specific exposures to sea-buckthorn juice. The results revealed acceptance learning of non-exposed products across the intervention. Habitual changes appeared very important drivers of eating behavior, more important than sensory acceptance. Furthermore the intervention combined with food engagement appeared to be similarly effective as repeated exposure to change acceptance in children.
Furthermore, it was investigated how acceptance of a liked and a disliked Nordic snack bar developed across repeated exposures. The majority of children exposed to an initially disliked bar increased acceptance to the same level as the initially liked bar. Whereas, children repeatedly exposed to a liked bar increased their intake, but not liking.
The process of exposure was investigated for two Nordic juices. A boredom effect was observed for one of the juices, however, intake increased at follow-up tests, 3 and 6 months after the last exposure. Additionally these results revealed that children defined as “initial dislikers”, were the only once that increased their liking and familiarity across repeated exposures, whereas children increased their intake regardless of initial liking.
These results suggest that repeated exposure as well as food engagement constitute efficient methods to enhance the acceptance of Nordic foods. Furthermore the importance of follow-up tests and initial liking was highlighted.
Many different factors affect acceptance and acceptance learning of food products, some of those may even become challenges to food acceptance. Secondly, potential challenges to the acceptance of Nordic foods were investigated. Bitter taste sensitivity was examined as a potential challenge to acceptance of juices. Children with high sensitivity to quinine had a lower intake of bitter juice and a higher intake of juices added sucrose. These bitter sensitive children may benefit from masking, to reduce the bitterness.
The existence of a non-eater group in both repeated exposure studies was revealed as another challenge to acceptance. This segment of children does not increase their intake across repeated exposures. The non-eater groups constituted approximately 20-30% of the children.
Children benefit very differently from food interventions. These huge individual differences observed suggest that taking account of individual differences could improve the success of interventions in children