Mothers' Perceptions and Attitudes towards Children's Vegetable Consumption-A Qualitative, Cross-cultural Study of Chilean, Chinese and American Mothers Living in Northern California.

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.

A cross-cultural analysis of children's vegetable preferences.

The successful promotion of vegetable consumption by children requires a deep understanding of children's vegetable preferences as well as the factors shaping them throughout childhood. This study analyzed children vegetable liking in four different age ranges (5-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12 years old) in Chile, China and the United States. Three hundred and eighty-four children completed this study. All participants tasted and rated 14 different vegetables for liking and described the samples using Check-All-That-Apply (CATA). We found significant differences in degree of overall liking among children from the three countries (p < 0.001). Specifically, children in China gave higher overall liking scores than children in the US, and in the US higher than in Chile. Child age and gender did not influence children's vegetable overall liking across the three countries. Across all countries and age groups, liking of taste and texture were the best predictors of children overall liking. The penalty analysis of CATA selections by children showed that the mean impact of the attributes that children used to describe the samples on their liking varied among countries, with the descriptors having the least impact on liking for Chinese children.