Sensory education decreases food neophobia score and encourages trying unfamiliar foods in 8-12-year-old children.pdf

Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 353–360

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Food Quality and Preference

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodqual

Sensory education decreases food neophobia score and encourages trying

unfamiliar foods in 8–12-year-old children

Sari Mustonen * , Hely Tuorila

Department of Food Technology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 66, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland

article info

abstract

Article history:

Received 3 March 2009

Received in revised form 30 June 2009

Accepted 1 September 2009

Available online 4 September 2009

The effects of sensory education on food-related traits and responses to food were examined over a per-

iod of 1.5 years in school children. Children (N = 164, 8- and 11-year-old at baseline) from two schools in

Helsinki were divided in an education group (E; N = 92) receiving up to two waves of sensory lessons, and

a control group (C; N = 72) participating in baseline and follow-up measurements only. The 1st wave (10

lessons) followed the principles of the French program ‘‘Classes du goût” and the 2nd wave (5 extensive

lessons to 2/3 of the E group) concentrated on different food categories. A questionnaire assessing chil-

dren’s liking and familiarity of unfamiliar and familiar foods and food neophobia, was sent to parents at

the baseline and after each wave of sensory lessons. After education, the E group had tried a larger pro-

portion of unfamiliar foods than at the baseline. The number of tasted foods in the C group remained at

the baseline level. Food neophobia score decreased in the E group, while no change was seen in the C

group. The effects of education were stronger in the younger children. Thus, sensory education has poten-

tial to activate children to try new foods and thereby to increase variety in their diets.

Keywords:

School children

Sensory education

Food neophobia

Unfamiliar food

1. Introduction

mulate, helping them to become less neophobic because fewer

foods are novel to them ( Cooke & Wardle, 2005 ).

Although food neophobia has evolutionarily been useful, reduc-

ing the possibility of poisoning from unfamiliar and potentially

harmful foods, it may have negative effects on dietary variety in

the modern environment with safe food. Especially in children,

food neophobia may adversely affect food choices by restricting in-

take of fruits and vegetables ( Cooke, Wardle, & Gibson, 2003 ) and

limiting overall dietary variety ( Falciglia, Couch, Gribble, Pabst, &

Frank, 2000 ). Food neophobia is not only related to willingness to

try novel foods, but also to the expected liking for novel foods ( Pli-

ner & Hobden, 1992; Tuorila, Meiselman, Bell, Cardello, & Johnson,

1994; Tuorila, Andersson, Martikainen, & Salovaara, 1998 ).

Behavioral food neophobia may be reduced by exposures to

new foods ( Pliner, Pelchat, & Grabski, 1993; Birch et al., 1998 ).

However, Loewen and Pliner (1999) found that exposure to

good-tasting novel foods is more efﬁcient in reducing food neopho-

bia, while exposure to bad-tasting novel foods may have no effect

or even increases behavioral neophobia ( Loewen & Pliner, 1999 ).

Thus, creating positive experiences with novel tastes seems to gen-

eralize to willingness to taste other novel foods ( Pliner & Salvy,

2006 ). Therefore, parents could help their children to become

unprejudiced eaters by providing them a large variety of different

foods. However, the current lifestyle in industrialized countries

acts as a main barrier to providing regular and balanced meals at

home. Parents are busy and the need for convenience drives them

to feed their children with easy options like fast food or snacks

Childhood eating habits play an important role in determining

individual diets in the adulthood ( Mikkilä, Räsänen, Raitakari, Pie-

tinen, & Viikari, 2004 ), and children tend to base their food prefer-

ences and choices primarily on sensory qualities of food

( Drewnowski, 2000; Nicklaus, Boggio, Chabanet, & Issanchou,

2004 ). Children may build up an image of how an acceptable food

should look, and perhaps smell, and foods not sufﬁciently close to

this image will be rejected ( Dovey, Staples, Gibson, & Halford,

2008 ). An unfamiliar food is a target of food neophobia, reluctance

to eat or the avoidance of new foods. Food neophobia appears in all

age groups, and its strength varies between individuals ( Pliner &

Salvy, 2006 ). Using a multi-item verbal instrument for the mea-

surement of food neophobia ( Pliner & Hobden, 1992 ), it has been

shown to be a heritable trait ( Knaapila et al., 2007 ). Although a per-

sonality trait, food neophobia may also decrease during childhood

or adolescence, thus being an age-dependent state ( Rigal et al.,

2006 ). Still, within ages the individual differences are fairly stable.

It has been shown that exposures to a large variety of unfamiliar

foods can reduce the neophobic reactions towards other novel, at

least similar, foods ( Birch, Gunder, Grimm-Thomas, & Laing,

1998 ). As children age, their experiences of different foods accu-

* Corresponding author. Present address: Valio Ltd., R&D, P.O. Box 30, FI-00039

Valio, Finland. Tel.: +358 10 381 3047; fax: +358 10 381 3372.

E-mail address: sari.mustonen@valio.ﬁ (S. Mustonen).

doi: 10.1016/j.foodqual.2009.09.001

354

S. Mustonen, H. Tuorila / Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 353–360

( Gillman et al., 2000; Haapalahti, Mykkänen, Tikkanen, & Kokko-

nen, 2003 ). Such practices do not promote new food experiences

among children and adolescents ( Carruth et al., 1998; Neumark-

Sztainer, Hannan, Story, Croll, & Perry, 2003 ), and new means

should be developed and tested. The French sensory education pro-

gram, Classes du goût ( Puisais & Pierre, 1987 ), was recently re-

ported to temporarily reduce food neophobia in school children

and encourage children to try new, unfamiliar foods ( Reverdy,

Chesnel, Schlich, Köster, & Lange, 2008 ). Overall, the ‘taste lessons’

aim to teach young children how to become well-informed con-

sumers who are aware of the quality and differences between

foods through their sensory impressions. Children’s awareness is

increased through exercises that focus on their senses and appeal

to their interest and curiosity. The program is intended to teach

children about the pleasures of food. As a result of the education,

children may become less neophobic. In Finland, we conducted a

follow-up study examining the possible effects of the Finnish ver-

sion of sensory education program on children’s food-related per-

ceptions and traits. The program was adapted from earlier versions

( Puisais & Pierre, 1987; Hagman & Algotson, 2000 ), and extended

to include ﬁve further lessons to deepen children’s knowledge of

main food categories (see Mustonen, Rantanen, and Tuorila

(2009) for detailed description of the lessons).

In the following, we report the impact of sensory education, as

reported by parents, on children’s food-related dispositions and

behavior, such as food neophobia, willingness to taste unfamiliar

foods, and pleasantness of foods in general. We predicted that sen-

sory education would increase willingness to taste unfamiliar

foods and enjoyment of food. The 2nd wave was expected to de-

crease neophobia further and increase enjoyment of the speciﬁc

food categories (dairy, cereal and meat) involved in the education

program.

October-December 2004

PILOT TESTING

RECRUITMENT

Informed consent (parents)

January 2005

BASELINE MEASUREMENT

Sensory instruments

Questionnaire to parents

BASELINE

MEASUREMENT

1 st WAVE OF SENSORY EDUCATION

April-May 2005

1 st FOLLOW-UP MEASUREMENT

Sensory instruments

Questionnaire to parents

1 st FOLLOW-UP

MEASUREMENT

January 2006

2 nd FOLLOW-UP MEASUREMENT

Sensory instruments

2 nd WAVE OF SENSORY EDUCATION

(for 2/3 of the education group)

May 2006

3 rd FOLLOW-UP MEASUREMENT

Sensory instruments

Questionnaire to parents

2 nd FOLLOW-UP

MEASUREMENT

January 2007

4 th FOLLOW-UP MEASUREMENT

Sensory instruments

2. Methods

Fig. 1. Flow chart of the experimental procedure of the follow-up study. Data points

reported in this paper are marked with dashed line.

2.1. Overview of the design

A questionnaire completed by parents and assessing children’s

liking and familiarity of foods from different categories and food-

related traits was used as the measuring instrument. One-half of

the children (education group ‘‘E”) received up to two waves of

taste lessons (1st, a Finnish application of Classes du goût program

and 2nd, activating lessons on main food categories to 2/3 of the E

group) and another half served as the control group ‘‘C”. The

questionnaire was sent to all parents at the baseline and after

both waves of sensory lessons. Two age groups were included to

study whether the possible effect of education is age-dependent

( Mustonen et al., 2009 ). The E group was further divided into

two subgroups receiving either one or two waves of education

(E1 and E2). The 2nd wave of education was included to examine

whether the impact of education could be strengthened by an

additional module. The education was expected to decrease food

neophobia and thus, increase the willingness to taste unfamiliar

foods, and affect positively children’s dietary variety.

The follow-up data were collected over three semesters, with

the following schedule for the completion of the questionnaire

( Fig. 1 ): January 2005 (baseline), May 2005 (1st follow-up), and

May 2006 (2nd follow-up). The entire follow-up study extended

over 2 years, with a ﬁnal data point on chemosensory performance

in January 2007 ( Mustonen et al., 2009 ).

study, the subjects were students at the 2nd (8 years) and 5th

(11 years) grades in the Viikki Teacher Training School at Univer-

sity of Helsinki (E group, N = 92) and Puistola Primary School (C

group, N = 72). The population characteristics, including the

anthropometric data (reported by parents) are shown in Table 1 .

The students from the Viikki Teacher Training School at University

of Helsinki were chosen to be the E group, because sensory lessons

ﬁtted into their curriculum.

Sensory lessons were provided to classes, not to individuals, for

which reason randomization of the students to the treatment and

control groups was not possible. However, the schools chosen were

approximately similar in size, and students had approximately

similar backgrounds. Parents’ education level, family size, and

the eating and cooking habits of the families were very similar in

both groups ( Table 2 ).

The students participated in laboratory tests reported by

Mustonen et al. (2009) in which one of the tasks was to evaluate

willingness to taste familiar and unfamiliar foods, presented as

photographs, by answering the question ‘‘Would you like to taste

this food?” either ‘‘yes” or ‘‘no”. At baseline, the mean sum of ‘‘yes”

answers for the ﬁve unfamiliar foods presented was 2.4 for educa-

tion group and 2.2 for control group. The difference between

groups was not signiﬁcant (p = 0.43). For the seven familiar foods,

the ﬁgures were 5.5 and 5.9, respectively (p = 0.14). Thus, the

groups were similar at baseline in terms of behavioral neophobia.

Table 3 shows the correlations between children’s willingness indi-

ces and parents’ ratings of FNS and behavioral neophobia of their

children. Although moderate, the correlations were of the same

range with correlations obtained from adults who report their

2.2. Subjects

Initially 244 students (aged 8–11 years) from two primary

schools in Helsinki were recruited. The data were complete for

164 subjects that were used in analyses. In the beginning of the

S. Mustonen, H. Tuorila / Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 353–360

355

Table 1

Population characteristics at baseline (N = 164). In the beginning of the study the children were 8-year-old (2nd graders) and 11-year-old (5th graders).

Group

Grade

N (gender)

Height (cm)

Weight (kg)

BMI

Total

Girls/boys

Mean (SD)

Control a (C)

2nd–3rd

23/13

134.4 (6.6)

31.2 (7.2)

17.1 (2.9)

5th–6th

16/20

149.3 (7.3)

41.2 (8.1)

17.8 (4.3)

Education1 b (E1)

2nd–3rd

11/6

134.7 (4.4)

30.8 (4.8)

16.9 (2.3)

5th–6th

9/6

148.8 (9.7)

37.6 (7.7)

16.0 (5.0)

Education2 c (E2)

2nd–3rd

9/16

131.4 (6.5)

28.3 (5.3)

16.4 (2.5)

5th–6th

14/21

151.5 (7.6)

43.9 (9.0)

18.4 (4.1)

a No sensory education.

b One wave of sensory education.

c Two waves of sensory education.

Table 2

Modes * on parents’ education, on family sizes, and on eating and cooking habits of the families in control group and on education group (E1 and E2 combined) (N = 164).

Variable

Control (N = 72)

Education (N = 92)

Number of adults in the family

Number of children in the family

Highest education level

University degree

Eating together

At least once a day

Almost daily

Eating self-prepared food

Almost daily

Eating frozen dishes

1–2 times a week

Eating in pizzerias

Less than once a month

Eating in hamburger restaurants

Less than once a month

* Also the distributions and mean values of these variables were similar in both groups.

Table 3

Baseline correlations (Pearson’s r) between children’s ratings on willingness to try unfamiliar foods and parents’ ratings on their children’s food neophobia and behavioral

neophobia (number of tasted foods among the 10 most unfamiliar foods). Test–retest correlations (Pearson) for FNS at baseline vs. 1st follow-up vs. 2nd follow-up.

Group

Willingness to try

(children) vs. FNS (parents)

Willingness to try (children)

vs. number of tasted foods (parents)

FNS baseline vs.

FNS 1st follow-up (parents)

FNS 1st follow-up vs.

2nd follow-up (parents)

Control

.31 *

.48 *

.84 **

.86 **

Education 1

.31 *

.51 **

.72 **

.73 **

Education 2

.33 *

.45 *

.83 **

.75 * *

All subjects

.32 **

.48 **

.82 **

.77 **

* Correlation signiﬁcant at the 0.05 level.

** Correlation signiﬁcant at the 0.01 level.

willingness and FNS items ( Tuorila, Lähteenmäki, Pohjalainen, &

Lotti, 2001; Pliner & Salvy, 2006 ). Thus, parents’ ratings should reli-

ably reﬂect their children’s behavior.

The study protocol followed the ethical principles of sensory

testing in our laboratory, approved by the ethical committee of

the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry. An additional approval

was applied as the subjects were minors (under 18 years of age).

The subjects’ parents signed an informed consent before the study

began. The subjects themselves gave a verbal assent to participate.

and familiarity of 48 foods (36 + 12 unfamiliar) and FNS was sent

to parents. The 2nd wave of sensory education (February–April

2006) was given to 2/3 of the original E group, and it consisted

of ﬁve extensive lessons concentrating on different food categories

(cereal, dairy and meat), one at a time. The two education groups

are called E1 (N = 32, receiving one wave of education) and E2

(N = 60, receiving two waves of education). The C group was the

same throughout the study. At the ﬁnal follow-up (May 2006), a

questionnaire on children’s level of pleasantness and familiarity

of 60 foods (36 original + 12 unfamiliar + 12 unfamiliar), and FNS

was sent to parents ( Fig. 1 ).

2.3. Overview of the study protocol

At the baseline (January 2005), a questionnaire was sent to par-

ents. The pleasantness and familiarity of 36 foods were queried and

Food Neophobia Scale (FNS); 10 items, modiﬁed from the original

( Pliner & Hobden, 1992 ) by couching the items in terms of the chil-

dren’s behavior was presented. After that the children were di-

vided into two groups: an E group (N = 92) receiving ten sensory

lessons following the principles of the French program ‘‘Classes

du goût”, revised and updated based on the current scientiﬁc

knowledge, and a C group (N = 72) receiving no lessons. After the

1st education wave (May 2005), a questionnaire on pleasantness

2.4. Questionnaire

The questionnaire started with questions on the child’s demo-

graphics, height and weight, and the attention the child normally

paid to the appearance, odor, taste and texture of foods ( Mustonen

et al., 2009 ).

At baseline, a list of 36 foods, six (four familiar and two unfamil-

iar) in each of the following categories: (1) fruits and berries, (2)

vegetables and starches, (3) meat products, (4) cheeses, (5) sea-

food, and (6) cereal products was presented to the parents. For

356

S. Mustonen, H. Tuorila / Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 353–360

the estimation of behavioral neophobia, they were asked how

familiar their child was with these foods on a 5-point scale:

1 = ‘he/she does not recognize this product’, 2 = ‘he/she recognizes

the product, but has not tasted it’, 3 = ‘he/she has tasted this prod-

uct’, 4 = ‘he/she occasionally eats this product’, and 5 = ‘He/she reg-

ularly eats this product’ ( Tuorila et al., 2001 ). The parents were also

asked how pleasant/unpleasant their child ﬁnds the same 36 foods

on a 7-point scale: 1 = ‘very unpleasant’, 2 = ‘moderately unpleas-

ant’, 3 = ‘slightly unpleasant’, 4 = ‘neither pleasant nor unpleasant’,

5 = ‘slightly pleasant’, 6 = ‘moderately pleasant’, 7 = ‘very pleasant’.

The option ‘has not tasted’ was also given. Same questions were in-

cluded in the next two extended questionnaires, but the number of

queried foods was increased. For the foods at the baseline and in

the 1st follow-up, see Table 4 . In the 2nd (ﬁnal) follow-up, the

questionnaire was extended with the following foods: blood grape-

fruit, ﬁg, arugula, chard, noodles, tofu, cocoa milk, Manchego, ton-

gue, ostrich meat, blue mussel and oysters (results not reported).

Following was the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) ( Pliner &

Hobden, 1992 ), which is a validated 10-item questionnaire (ﬁve

positive and ﬁve negative items), which, when ﬁlled in by the

parents, has been proven to be a good measure of children’s food

neophobia ( Pliner, 1994 ). In the questionnaire, the items were

couched in terms of the children’s behavior, for example ‘‘I do

not trust new foods” was changed to ‘‘My child does not trust

new foods”. The FNS was included in all three questionnaires. In

addition, questions on the families’ eating and cooking habits were

included in the baseline questionnaire.

vince any fruit, vegetable, or ﬁsh supplier for collaboration on

the lessons. Two school classes out of three from the E group par-

ticipated in the 2nd wave, because we were interested in the

impact of each wave separately. The 2nd wave was performed

in collaboration with Finnish food industries. The lessons con-

tained a short introduction to the topic and practical exercises,

which are described in detail in Mustonen et al. (2009) . In both

education waves, the practical exercises and activation of senses

played the major role.

2.6. Statistical analysis

Repeated measures of ANOVA 3 * 2 * 3 (or 2) was used, with be-

tween-subjects variables education (E1, E2, and C) and age group

(8 and 11 years), and within-subject variable follow-up point

(baseline, follow-up 1, follow-up 2 or baseline/follow-up 1 and fol-

low-up 2), to examine the effect of education on food neophobia

score (range 10–70), on willingness to taste unfamiliar foods

(range 0–10) and pleasantness of different food categories (range

1–7). The effect of education was expected to appear as an interac-

tion of education x follow-up point. When a trend for age group

difference was observed (main effect of age group or interaction

of education x age group x follow-up point), the two age groups

were analyzed separately.

The individual FNS score was a sum of scores for each item

(those negative to food neophobia reversed), ranging from 10 to

70. The internal reliability of the scale, Cronbach’s alpha, was

0.91 in all three measurements. The test–retest correlations are

shown in Table 3 .

For analyzing willingness to taste the unfamiliar foods, a new

variable was created. A food was regarded as unfamiliar, if its mean

familiarity in the whole study population was lower than 3 (=a

child has tasted the food). Based on this principle, 10 foods at the

baseline were included to the group of unfamiliar foods. Familiar-

ity ratings were then recoded into two categories: 1–2 = 0 (not

tasted) and 3–5 = 1 (tasted). After that, a sum of the 10 most unfa-

miliar foods (mean rating of familiarity at baseline <3) tasted was

calculated for each subject and each measurement. Thus, the range

of ‘tasting score’ was 0–10.

For analyzing the overall pleasantness of the foods in different

categories, again new variables were created. A mean pleasantness

score (range 1–7) for eight foods (four familiar and four unfamiliar)

in each of the six food categories (fruit and berry, vegetables and

2.5. Sensory education program

The 1st wave of sensory education program between the base-

line and the 1st follow-up measurement, held in February–April

2005, comprised of nine sensory lessons and a restaurant visit.

The lessons followed the principles of the program ‘‘Classes du

goût”( Puisais & Pierre, 1987 ), but the contents and reference mate-

rials were modiﬁed to suit in the Finnish environment and the cur-

rent scientiﬁc knowledge. Each lesson comprised of a short lecture

(adapted to be suitable for children) on the topic, discussion and

practical exercises. The lessons are described in detail in Mustonen

et al. (2009) .

The 2nd wave of sensory education took place in February–

April 2006, and consisted of ﬁve lessons related to speciﬁc food

categories: dairy, cereal and meat. We did not manage to con-

Table 4

Correlations (Pearson’s r) between familiarity and pleasantness of the queried foods at the baseline and in the 1st and 2nd follow-up (48, six food categories). Foods in each

category (columns) are arranged in descending order of familiarity. The 10 most unfamiliar foods are marked in bold italics. The cells including foods added in the 1st and 2nd

follow-up are marked with grey background.

S. Mustonen, H. Tuorila / Food Quality and Preference 21 (2010) 353–360

357

starches, cereal, dairy, meat, and seafood) was calculated for ques-

tionnaire results after the 1st and 2nd education wave. The overall

pleasantness was calculated and analyzed also separately for unfa-

miliar and familiar foods in each food category.

Pearson’s correlation coefﬁcients (r) between familiarity and

pleasantness of the 36 queried foods at the baseline were calcu-

lated. To assess the reliability of the parents’ estimate on their chil-

dren’s neophobia and number of tasted foods, a correlation

between baseline FNS score, number of tasted unfamiliar foods

and the number of unfamiliar foods children themselves reported

to be willing to taste in the baseline laboratory task ( Mustonen

et al., 2009 ), was calculated using Pearson’s r ( Table 3 ). All analyses

were conducted with SPSS , version 15, and p 6 0.05 was taken as

the level of signiﬁcance throughout the analyses.

at the baseline level throughout the study period [interaction of

education x follow-up point F(4,176) = 3.22, p = 0.014]. The effect

was signiﬁcant for the younger children [interaction of education

x follow-up point F(4, 86) = 4.18, p = 0.004]. For the older group

the education effect was not signiﬁcant (p = 0.44), but the direction

was similar as for the younger group ( Fig. 2 ). E2 group differed

from the E1 group signiﬁcantly in the younger age group, while

in the older age group no difference was found (Tukey).

3.3. Food neophobia score

At baseline, the three groups did not differ from each other in

terms of food neophobia score [main effect of education

F(2,98) = 0.51, p = 0.6], nor did the age groups [main effect of age

group F(1,98) = 0.25, p = 0.62]. The baseline FNS score reported by

the parents and number of unfamiliar foods the children reported

to be willing to taste in the laboratory were negatively correlated

(r = .32) (p < 0.01) ( Table 3 ).

The main effects of follow-up points were qualiﬁed by the sig-

niﬁcant interaction between follow-up point and education group.

Sensory education decreased the food neophobia score, while no

change was seen in the C group during the study period [interac-

tion of education x follow-up point F(4,196) = 2.77, p = 0.029]

( Fig. 3 a and b). The effect was signiﬁcant for the younger children

[interaction of education x follow-up point F(4,102) = 2.59,

p = 0.041] ( Fig. 3 a), while it did not reach signiﬁcance in the older

group despite of a similar trend (p = 0.14) ( Fig. 3 b). In the end of the

study, the neophobia was at its lowest in the group receiving both

waves of sensory education (E2) for both age groups. E2 group dif-

fered from the E1 group signiﬁcantly in the younger age group,

while in the older age group no difference was found (Tukey).

3. Results

3.1. Correlation between familiarity and pleasantness of the foods at

the baseline

The less familiar a food was, the higher was the correlation be-

tween familiarity and pleasantness ( Table 4 ). For fruits and berries,

Pearson’s r varied from 0.55 (apple) to 0.74 (guava), and for vege-

tables and starches, from 0.19 (rice) to 0.86 (shiitake). For cereals, r

ranged from 0.51 (rye bread) to 0.91 (couscous); for cheeses from

0.74 (processed cheese) to 0.84 (Mozzarella), for meat products

from 0.42 (meat balls) to 0.88 (bratwurst), and for seafood, from

0.44 (ﬁsh sticks) to 0.79 (mustard herring and sushi).

3.2. Number of tasted unfamiliar foods (behavioral neophobia)

The two E groups (E1 and E2) and the C group were compared

for the number of ten most unfamiliar foods ( Table 4 ) tasted in

each of the three measurement points. The three groups did not

differ from each other in terms of the number of tasted unfamiliar

foods [main effect of education F(2,88) = 1.00, p = 0.37]. The older

children tended to have tasted a greater number of unfamiliar

foods compared to the younger group [main effect of age group F

(1,88) = 3.76, p = 0.056]. The number of tasted unfamiliar foods

was at its highest in the ﬁnal follow-up point [main effect of fol-

low-up point F(2,87) = 19.7, p < 0.001].

The main effects of follow-up points were qualiﬁed by the sig-

niﬁcant interaction between follow-up point and education group.

After the sensory education waves, both education groups had

tasted a larger number of the queried ten foods than at the base-

line. In the control group, the number of tasted foods remained

C (N=36)

E1 (N=17)

E2 (N=25)

Baseline

After 1st wave

After 2nd wave

Baseline

After 1st wave

After 2nd wave

C (N=36)

E1 (N=15)

E2 (N=35)

C (N=36) E1 (N=17) E2 (N=25)

C (N=36) E1 (N=15) E2 (N=35)

2.-3. graders

5.-6. graders

Baseline

After 1st wave

After 2nd wave

Fig. 2. Mean number (+SEM) of tasted foods among the10 most unfamiliar foods (at

baseline, after 1st education wave and in the end) of the C group (N = 72, no sensory

education), E1 group (N = 32, one wave of sensory education) and E2 group (N = 60,

two waves of sensory education).

Fig. 3. Mean score (+SEM) of Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) of (a) the younger

children (2–3 grades) and (b) the older children (5–6 grades) of the C group (N = 72),

E1 group (N = 32), and E2 group (N = 60) measured at the baseline, after the 1st

education wave and in the end (after the 2nd education wave).

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