Sowing the Seeds of Taste? A Novel Approach to Investigate the Impact of Early Sweet Exposure on Children’s Dietary Taste Patterns from 12 to 36 Mo

Abstract

Background

Early food experiences shape children’s eating behavior. Whether initiating complementary feeding (CF) with sweet-tasting foods impacts the taste of later dietary patterns remains unknown. This study combined a quantitative taste intensity database with dietary assessment methods to investigate this.

Objectives

This study aims to investigate whether initiating CF in infants with sweet compared with neutral-tasting foods leads to different dietary taste patterns at 12–36 mo.

Methods

A total of 246 Dutch infants (age 20.2 ± 1.8 wk, 129 girls) participated in an randomized control trial; they received either sweet-tasting (n = 125) or neutral-tasting (n = 121) fruit and vegetable purees during the first 15 d of initial CF. Dietary intake was assessed at 12, 18, 24, and 36 mo using 3 24-h recalls. Reported foods (n = 1277) were grouped into 5 clusters—"sour-sweet," "sweet-fatty," "fatty-salty," "fatty," and "neutral" tasting foods—based on their taste intensity values using K-means clustering. Dietary taste patterns were calculated as the average daily intake of energy (%kcal) and weight (%grams) from each taste cluster and compared between intervention groups.

Results

Overall, children’s energy intake from neutral-tasting foods decreased from 61% ± 11% at 12 mo to 44% ± 12% at 36 mo (P < 0.001). Weight intake from neutral foods also declined (from 74% ± 9% to 62% ± 13%, P < 0.001). Conversely, children’s energy intake from sweet-fatty, fatty-salty, and fatty foods increased significantly over the study period (from 12% ± 7% to 21% ± 10%, from 8% ± 6% to 13% ± 7%, and from 7% ± 5% to 11% ± 6%, respectively, all P ≤ 0.01). No differences were observed between the 2 intervention groups.

Conclusions

Overall, children’s diets became more diverse and intense in taste but exposure to sweet taste during early CF did not influence the dietary taste patterns in later childhood.

Trial registration number

This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03348176.