Feeding infants and young children: guidelines, research and practice

Abstract

Weaning (i.e. introduction of complementary foods) is a transitional process between the consumption of a unique food, milk, and family foods. This review of existing literature regarding factors favouring the development of food acceptance at the beginning of weaning underlines in particular the roles of repeated exposure, of introduction of a variety of foods, of timing of introduction of weaning foods, and of food sensory properties (texture, taste and flavours). All factors appear to play a role in the acceptance of weaning foods. The efficiency, most favourable windows and long-term impact of each of these factors is not known accurately.

Highlights

? When and how complementary feeding is conducted may influence acceptance of new foods. ? Repeated exposure enhances new food acceptance. ? At the beginning of weaning, feeding a variety of foods increases new food acceptance. ? Timing of weaning may influence new food acceptance but was not much studied. ? Sensory properties of new foods (texture, taste, flavour) impact new food acceptance.

Keywords

Weaning; Food; Acceptance; Sensory properties; Weaning practices

Introduction

Food habits form early in childhood and are likely to track over childhood until the beginning of adulthood (Nicklaus et al., 2004 and Nicklaus et al., 2005). Understanding the factors driving the acceptance of the very first foods other than milk, is therefore of particular importance, since these foods will form the basis of the child's future food repertoire.

Several factors are now known to be involved in the acceptance of foods at weaning. In particular, the role of previous, indirect sensory experience has gained attention, as described in another paper in the present supplemental issue (Cooke and Fildes, 2011). Here we will ocus on the role of direct experience with food on their acceptance, describing in particular the role of the practices of weaning, i.e. timing of introduction of solid foods, repeated exposure, and variety of foods offered together with the role of the sensory properties of foods.

Introduction of weaning foods is a process which helps the transition between a unique single food, milk, toward a diversity of family foods. At the age when weaning is generally conducted in developed countries, that is during the middle of the first year, the infant displays limited abilities in terms of physiological capacities (i.e. intestinal maturity, renal functions and oral development), therefore family foods need to be adapted to enable the developing infant to process them. They are adapted in terms of texture and are initially offered in the form of purées or soup; they are also adapted in terms of sodium and fibre contents, which intake should be limited at the beginning of weaning. Weaning is defined here as the transitional process between milk and family foods through the progressive introduction of weaning foods and therefore can be considered as having been achieved by around the end of the second year at the latest. In the light of this specification, the present review will mainly (but not exclusively) focus on studies presenting results covering this age range (6–24 m).

How the practices of weaning might influence the acceptance of weaning foods

Weaning will be defined here as the transitional process from milk to family foods. Human infants are born with very few ‘innate’ food preferences, but with a strong ability to learn to like new foods (Davis, 1939). In relation with such learning abilities, some practices of weaning are likely to affect the acceptability of weaning foods by the infant. The impact of some practices on acceptance of foods such as timing of introduction of solid foods, repeated exposure, and variety of foods offered has received attention and is documented. We will summarize the main findings from this literature.

Role of the timing of introduction of solid foods

Across countries, recommendations may vary as to when to start introducing infants to weaning food, ranging from between 4 and 6 months to the 6th month on (see also Schwartz, Scholtens, Lalanne, Weenen & Nicklaus, 2011 in this issue). This discrepancy may result in practical questions from the parents regarding when and what to introduce the infant to first. Nevertheless, guidelines clearly state that parents should wait at least until the age of 4 months before introducing solid foods, but it was observed in different countries that mothers do not wait until this age (Alder et al., 2004, Anderson et al., 2001, Le Heuzey et al., 2007 and Maier et al., 2007a).

From a physiological and psychological point of view, one might wonder whether specific time windows are more favourable to the introduction of weaning foods, independent of the importance of sustaining breastfeeding until the 6th month of life (WHO, 2003), and of the role of timing of weaning on the development of allergies (Anderson et al., 2009 and Zutavern et al., 2008). The hypothesis of the existence of a “sensitive period” for the introduction of solid foods was previously raised (Beauchamp and Mennella, 1998, Illingworth and Lister, 1964 and Mason et al., 2005). However,

consequences of timing of introduction of complementary foods in terms of food behaviour and acceptance are not very well documented. Studies focusing on a specific milk formula such as casein hydrolysate formula, which bears distinct, unpleasant flavour notes, suggest that there may be a specific window to favour its acceptance: it is easily accepted at the age of 2 months but not at the age of 7 months (Mennella & Beauchamp, 1996). At the age of 7 months, such a formula is accepted provided the infant had received previous exposure to this type of formula but exposure during the first three months of life or during months 3–5 did not make a difference (Mennella, Griffin, & Beauchamp, 2004). Concerning solid foods, a study with 12 subjects showed that the acceptance of salty cereals compared to plain cereals was higher in infants aged 16–17 weeks than in infants aged 18–25 weeks (Harris, Thomas, & Booth, 1990). Whether acceptance of other complementary foods might differ according to the age of the child at weaning is not completely elucidated yet.

The consequences of an early introduction to fruit and vegetables have been analysed in different ways. One study reported a positive relationship between early consumption of fruits and consumption of fruits at 18 months old, and this relationship was mediated by the acceptance of the sour taste, which is pronounced in fruits (Blossfeld et al., 2007). Another study based on parental report revealed in particular that early introduction to fruit or vegetables (with no indication of specific age) was associated with higher consumption of fruit or vegetables, respectively, at 2–5 years of age (Cooke et al., 2004). In this analysis, after adjustment for effects potentially influencing consumption, such as parental intake or parental neophobia, only fruit intake was significantly related to early introduction of fruit. A similar finding was also shown in a study conducted in the USA (Skinner, Carruth, Bounds, Ziegler, & Reidy, 2002), suggesting that the early introduction of fruit has more impact on later consumption of fruit than the early introduction of vegetables. It is difficult to interpret such a finding. One might conclude that it is not necessary to introduce vegetables early in the infant's diet. However the specific nature of vegetables is that they are much less energy dense than other foods and than fruits (Gibson & Wardle, 2003) which does not favour their consumption in young children (Nicklaus, Boggio, & Issanchou, 2005). So altogether, vegetables are easily accepted at the beginning of weaning, but not when the child has reached a more advanced age around 2–4 years old (Gibson and Wardle, 2003 and Nicklaus et al., 2005a), revealing a transition in acceptance which might be related to their nutritional properties, their sensory properties (see section on sensory properties below), or to a competition from other more palatable foods introduced later on after the beginning of weaning.

Role of repeated exposure

The repetition of exposure of a food to a child is one of the primary determinants of its acceptance. Several studies have shown that a food is consumed more and is judged as more liked by an adult (generally the mother) after a number of presentations. The first study related to the effect of exposure in infants at the beginning of weaning clearly demonstrated an increase in acceptance of a novel green vegetable (green beans or peas) after 10 exposures to this food (Sullivan & Birch, 1994). A further study also showed a similar exposure effect: after 8 exposures to a novel fruit, intake increased (Birch, Gunder, Grimm-Thomas, & Laing, 1998). Such an exposure effect was further shown to be effective even for foods which were initially refused by the infant during the course of the weaning process (most often green vegetables, but also pumpkin) in contrast to foods initially accepted at the beginning of the weaning process (such as carrots for a majority of infants) (Maier, Chabanet, Schaal, Issanchou, & Leathwood, 2007). The exposure effect thus seems so consistent, powerful and universal that in later studies, it was considered as the “gold standard” against which any studied mechanism should be tested (see below).

However, despite the power of practices of repeated exposure in terms of increase of weaning food acceptance, surveys conducted in different countries across the world underline that most often, foods are only presented a limited number of times (in a majority of cases less than 5 times) before the parent(s) decide that the infant dislikes this food (Carruth et al., 2004 and Maier et al., 2007a). Therefore, it is likely that the most frequently offered foods are those that are the most liked initially. The effect of exposure might thus act principally by reinforcing acceptance of initially liked foods.

After the beginning of weaning, other studies showed that in 2-year-old children, taste exposure to the food, involving ingestion of the food, is necessary to increase acceptance of the food whereas visual exposure is not sufficient (Birch, McPhee, Shoba, Pirok, & Steinberg, 1987). Moreover, repeated exposure to a food can be offered either in a neutral context, or in a context where parents interact more directly with the child. For instance, in 2- to 6-year-old children providing the child with additional information on the benefits of a vegetable did not result in a higher liking of the vegetable relative to exposure alone (Wardle, Cooke, et al., 2003). Moreover, offering a reward (sticker) to the child if she/he agrees to taste a vegetable results in a lower increase in acceptance of the vegetable than simply exposing the food without contingency (Wardle, Herrera, Cooke, & Gibson, 2003). These results suggest that exposure is sufficient on its own in young children to promote food acceptance, provided they actually taste the food.

Repeated exposure can also lead to over-exposure and boredom, as discussed elsewhere, but it is not known exactly which ‘amount’ and/or frequency of exposure is optimal to promote food acceptance (Cooke, 2007). It may be also that there are individual variations in acceptance of repetitions: some infants might appreciate more than others to be given the same food repeatedly.

Role of the variety of foods offered

Not only do the repeated presentations of a given food influence acceptance of weaning foods, but also the repeated presentation of a variety of foods. Studies in this area were initially inspired by research in rodents demonstrating that exposure to a variety of flavours around the time of weaning was associated to a higher acceptance of new foods (Capretta et al., 1975 and Gerrish and Mennella, 2001). In human infants, exposure to a variety of foods at weaning also matters. Infants better accept carrot, a new food, either if they had been repeatedly exposed to carrot (repeated exposure effect) or to a variety of foods differing from one day to the next, but not if they had been repeatedly exposed to potato (Gerrish & Mennella, 2001). In this study, infants in the variety group better accepted chicken than children in the two other groups. Moreover, further studies showed that exposure to variety might enhance the acceptance of a less liked food, green bean, only if the “intensity” of the exposure to variety is increased: in that case, only if pairs of different foods were presented during the same meal over several days, not if different foods were presented over several days (Mennella, Nicklaus, Jagolino, & Yourshaw, 2008). This reveals that acceptance of green beans is more difficult to favour at the beginning of weaning, and that exposure to variety might be interpreted at the day level or at the meal level, that is introducing more than one food per eating occasion might also be a way to enhance exposure to variety, and therefore acceptance of new foods.

Research to understand the role of timing of exposure to variety (Maier, Chabanet, Schaal, Leathwood, & Issanchou, 2008) has also been conducted. This research revealed in particular that offering three different foods three times by alternating foods from one day to the next resulted in a higher acceptance of a new food than offering each of the three different foods for a period of three days. This effect on enhanced acceptance of the number of changes rather than of the number of different foods was observed for several new foods (zucchini-tomato, peas, meat and fish). Altogether, these findings suggest that variety is a robust mechanism favouring the acquisition of preference for new foods.

However, one might wonder whether exposure to a variety of foods from a given group generalise to new foods from another group (Mennella et al., 2008). In other words, does exposure to a variety of fruits generalise to a variety of vegetables? This study showed that exposure to a variety of fruits promoted the acceptance of a new fruit, but

unfortunately not of a new vegetable. One might conclude that a certain level of proximity in nutritional and/or sensory properties of foods is necessary to enable a generalised effect of learning toward a new food. However, more specifically, it is not known exactly how such a level of nutritional or sensory proximity could be defined and more research is needed to clarify this aspect.

In other respects, one might wonder whether the association of two foods during a meal might affect acceptance of one of them, in particular if one food is a vegetable and the other a sweet fruit. This was studied with weaning-age children (Forestell & Mennella, 2007). The results showed that repeated exposure to green beans increased consumption of green beans, whether or not peach purée was consumed after green beans. In this context therefore, it seems that the acceptance of each food is learned independently.

How the sensory properties of foods might be related to their acceptance

The sensory properties of the foods are important determinants of the initial acceptance of the foods by infants. Texture, taste and aromatic properties in particular play a role in their initial acceptance.

Due to the limited motor oral functions of the infant (Carruth and Skinner, 2002 and Gisel, 1991), texture is one of the properties of the foods that requires the most adaptation to enable the infant to ‘process’ and swallow the food. Even in older children, it is hypothesised that children prefer textures that they are able to process with ease (Szczesniak, 1972). A significant proportion of infants (23%) have difficulties with foods containing pieces (Coulthard & Harris, 2003). Such difficulties should not however be interpreted by parents as a reason to delay the introduction of solid foods. Delayed introduction is indeed associated with further problems of texture acceptance, as observed in infants who have received tube feeding (Mason et al., 2005). In healthy children, experimenting with new and varied textures early on in development is associated with less food refusals and a better acceptance of weaning foods later on (Northstone, Emmett, & Nethersole, 2001). In particular, the best predictor of chopped carrots in 12-month-old infants is the experience with carrots presented under a variety of textures (Blossfeld, Collins, Kiely, & Delahunty, 2007). Introduction of lumpy foods before the age of 6 months was associated with fewer food refusals at the age of 7 years, and a higher consumption of a number of fruits and vegetables (Coulthard, Harris, & Emmett, 2009). Lastly, concerning texture, the observation of the absence of the transfer of the effect of exposure between an industrially processed baby food and a home-made food might be related to the texture differences inherent to each type of food (Birch et al., 1998).

Beyond the specific contribution of texture at weaning age, some foods seem to be more easily accepted by infants from the very first bite than others (in which is also the case for older children and adults!) (Maier, Chabanet, Schaal, Issanchou, & Leathwood, 2007). Flavour, which can be broken into its components such as taste and aromatic properties, certainly plays a role. Previous indirect (and unconscious) learning of the food's specific flavours might influence this initial acceptance, as described more specifically in the paper by Cooke and Fildes (2011) in the present issue. It may also be that some tastes are more acceptable than others to the young child: it is well known for instance that acceptance of sweet taste and rejection of bitter taste is innate (in humans, in primates and in non-primates), which could account for the liking/disliking of foods bearing those tastes (Berridge, 2000 and Steiner, 1979).

However, in the young infant, when studying taste solutions at moderate concentrations, a clear rejection of a bitter solution is not always observed (Schwartz, Issanchou, & Nicklaus, 2009). Infants exhibit negative faces while drinking bitter solution, but might continue to drink, revealing the difficulty to interpret universally infant's reactions to a food (Schwartz et al., 2009). Moreover, as revealed in a study conducted in France, infants in their first year are more exposed to the sweet taste than to the bitter taste, which might reinforce the inborn preference for sweet taste (Schwartz et al., 2010). Analysis of infants’ first reaction when tasting a new food between the ages of 5 and 7 months revealed that most foods are accepted (88%), but this acceptance is modulated by the taste of the foods (Schwartz, 2009). For instance salty vegetables are significantly more accepted than vegetables without salt (Schwartz, Chabanet, Lange, Issanchou, & Nicklaus, 2011). For some foods bearing a sweet, sour or umami taste, the level of acceptance is correlated to the child's level of preference for solutions of the same tastes (Schwartz, 2009 and Schwartz et al., 2011a). A similar finding was also reported for the acceptance of sour fruits (Blossfeld et al., 2007).

More globally, the contribution of flavour in the initial acceptance of vegetables can be interpreted by comparing the effect of exposure to a variety of vegetables on the acceptance of carrot (Gerrish & Mennella, 2001) or of green beans (Mennella et al., 2008). Clearly, acceptance of green bean is more difficult to promote than that of carrot, no doubt in part due to the difference in tastes of the two vegetables with one being sweeter than the other. More research is needed to understand the role of food sensory properties on their acceptance by infants and young children at different stages of development.

Conclusion

Regarding factors favouring the development of food acceptance at the beginning of weaning, existing literature focuses heavily on the role of repeated exposure, introduction of a variety of foods, timing of introduction of weaning foods. However, the impact of timing of weaning on food acceptance has received very little specific attention with most investigation focusing on the nutritional consequences of the cessation of breastfeeding. The literature also clearly underlines the role of food sensory properties as determinants of the acceptance of the food, in particular texture, taste and flavours. It seems that within a food group (e.g., vegetables, fruits), foods might share a certain level of sensory and nutritional proximity which might drive, within certain limits, exposure to a food to promote acceptance of other food(s) from the same group. Therefore, within each food group, exposing infants to each food at least several times, together with exposure to a variety of foods from this food group, appears to be an interesting strategy to favour acceptance of these foods. Such a strategy should be applied for all food groups.

However, despite the importance of this emerging literature regarding factors driving the acceptance of weaning foods, many questions remain regarding the efficiency, most favourable windows and long-term impact of each of these factors. More specifically, whether each factor (exposure, variety and timing) is similarly efficient in promoting the acceptance of each food group (fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, dairy products, etc.) and in generalising to the acceptance of other food groups is not established. A greater focus on answering these questions would be of considerable interest to advance the science underlying weaning processes and will be of considerable utility to parents attempting to negotiate this difficult but important period of transition.

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