Establishing healthy dietary habits in childhood is crucial in preventing long-term repercussions, as a lack of dietary variety in childhood leads to enduring impacts on both physical and cognitive health. Poor conceptual knowledge about food has recently been shown to be a driving factor of food rejection. The majority of studies that have investigated the development of food knowledge along with food rejection have mainly focused on one subtype of conceptual knowledge about food, namely taxonomic categories (e.g., vegetables or meat). However, taxonomic categorization is not the only way to understand the food domain. We also heavily rely on other conceptual structures, namely thematic associations, in which objects are grouped because they share spatial-temporal properties or exhibit a complementary relationship (e.g., soft-boiled egg and soldiers). We rely on such thematic associations between food items, which may not fall into the same taxon, to determine the acceptability of food combinations. However, the development of children's ability to master these relations has not been systematically investigated, nor alongside the phenomenon of food rejection. The present research aims to fill this gap by investigating (i) the development of conceptual food knowledge (both taxonomic and thematic) and (ii) the putative relationship between children's food rejection (as measured by the Child Food Rejection Scale) and both thematic and taxonomic food knowledge. A proportional (A:B::C:?) analogy task, with a choice between taxonomic (i.e., bread and pasta) and thematic (i.e., bread and butter) food associates, was conducted on children between 3 and 7-years-old (n = 85). The children were systematically presented with either a thematic or taxonomic food base pair (A:B) and then asked to extend the example type of relation to select the respective thematic or taxonomic match to the target (C:?). Our results revealed, for the first time, that increased levels of food rejection were significantly predictive of poorer food identification and decreased thematic understanding. These findings entitle us to hypothesize that knowledge-based food education programs to foster dietary variety in young children, should not only aim to improve taxonomic understanding of food, but also thematic relations.

Food literacy has emerged as a key individual trait to promote the transformation of food systems toward healthy and sustainable diets. Childhood and adolescence are key periods for establishing the foundations of eating habits. Different food literacy competencies are acquired as children develop different cognitive abilities, skills, and experiences, contributing to the development of critical tools that allow them to navigate a complex food system. Thus, the design and implementation of programs to support the development of food literacy from early childhood can contribute to healthier and more sustainable eating habits. In this context, the aim of the present narrative review is to provide an in-depth description of how different food literacy competencies are developed in childhood and adolescence, integrating the extensive body of evidence on cognitive, social, and food-related development. Implications for the development of multisectoral strategies to target the multidimensional nature of food literacy and promote the development of the 3 types of competencies (relational, functional, and critical) are discussed.