No abstract

This exploratory research focused on the cultural variables involved in children’s vegetable consumption, through the analysis of mothers’ perceptions, attitudes, and feeding practices regarding their children’s intake, using qualitative consumer research methods. Twelve focus groups of mothers with children between 2–12 years old (Euro-Americans n = 20, Chinese n = 19, and Chilean n = 19) were conducted. All participants lived in Northern California, had higher education, and incomes that did not limit their vegetable purchase. Intercultural differences in vegetable preferences and consumption habits were found. Mothers across all groups agreed on the importance of children’s vegetable consumption, the influence that mothers have over their children’s vegetable intake, and how challenging it is to get children to eat a variety of vegetables. The ethnic groups differed regarding how they perceived the level of mothers' responsibility over children’s vegetable intake, the way that mothers defined the amount of vegetables that children should eat, the constraints that mothers had on increasing their children’s vegetable intake and mothers’ recommendations to encourage vegetable consumption. Our study suggests that under similar socio-economic and parental education levels, culture-specific strategies should be considered to foster healthy dietary habits in children.

This study examined how similar vegetable liking by children is to their peers', siblings', and mothers'. Three hundred and eighty‐four children (ages 5–12) and their mothers, from three countries—Chile, China, and the United States, tasted and rated 14 different vegetables for liking. To evaluate how children's vegetable liking varies with their social environment, we developed the degree of liking difference index, which is the sum of absolute differences between the likings of the child with the likings of a second person. Results suggest that country, child's age, and sensory modalities (appearance, aroma, taste and texture) are important factors that influence how much a child's vegetable liking resembles their mothers', peers', and siblings'. Children's vegetable liking resemblance with their family and peers was greatest in China, followed by the United States, and finally Chile. Children's vegetable liking was most similar to that of their siblings, followed by mothers, and finally peers, with similarity to all three groups tending to increase as children's ages increased. Practical applications It is a key to understand how children's social environments influence their vegetable liking in order to develop successful strategies to increase vegetable consumption in childhood. This study analyzes the similarity of children vegetable liking with their mothers, siblings and peers. The results of this study suggest that future behavioral/intervention research should focus on using family to encourage children to eat vegetables.