Art on a Plate: A Pilot Evaluation of an International Initiative Designed to Promote Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables by Children

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the 2016 International Chefs Day cooking workshops Art on a Plate. Design: Nonexperimental pretest-posttest design Setting: Art on a Plate workshops with children from 14 countries in Asia, America, and Europe. Participants: A total of 433 workshop participants aged 4−14 years (mean age, 8.6 years). Intervention: Instructed by a chef, children in the workshops created a self-chosen design on their plate with a spinach−fruit salad. Main Outcome Measures: Before and after the workshop, a questionnaire assessing liking and willingness to eat or taste; hunger was assessed using the Teddy the Bear method and emotions were assessed using the Self-assessment Manikin. The event coordinator evaluated salad intake. Analysis: Linear and generalized linear (logit) mixed models were used to test statistical differences before and after the workshop. Results: The workshop resulted in a small increase in liking (n = 409; P = .02) and person control (n = 375; P < .001) and a decrease in hunger (n = 379; P < .001). A total of 30% of children increased their liking scores, 18% decreased them, and 52% did not change them. Significant associations of liking and change in liking with salad intake were in the expected direction. Conclusion and Implications: This study showed the positive effect of a cooking workshop on children's salad liking across a selection of countries worldwide. Further research and novel methods are needed to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of cooking activities in real-life settings across countries.

Home-based cooking intervention with a smartphone app to improve eating behaviors in children aged 7–9 years: a feasibility study

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Impact of Child Interaction With Food Preparation on Vegetable Preferences: A Farm-Based Education Approach

“…22−25 Several studies have focused on children's involvement in other forms of food preparation and interaction, such as cooking, on child vegetable preferences. 26,27 Cooking interventions commonly involve participants in food preparation activities, including but not limited to cutting, baking, cooking, seasoning, and tasting, and then evaluating their preferences and/or consumption of self-prepared food. Cooking classes have positively affected child vegetable preferences.…”

Development of an emoji-based self-report measurement tool to measure emotions elicited by foods in preadolescents

“…Examples include cartoon characters like PrEmo expressing a variety of emotions by Desmet et al (2000) or images like the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) by Bradley & Lang, 1994;Lang (1980). SAM was used to measure emotions in different eating contexts with 6-14-year-old children (van der Horst, Ferrage, & Rytz, 2014;van der Horst, Mathias, Prieto Patron, & Allirot, 2019). PrEmo has been used with adults to measure emotional responses to foods to discriminate between similar products of the same product category (Gutjar et al, 2015) but to date this has not been explored with children in food research yet.…”