Do children like sugary and fatty foods? New research suggests that may not be the case

Children from different cultures like different levels of fat and sweetness in food and beverages, which raises questions about whether children like sugary and fatty flavors.study, published in Food Quality and Preferences, researchers looked at the taste preferences of
1705,
children aged
6,
to
9,
from Italy, Estonia, Cyprus, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Spain. They used pairs of comparisons in which children rated different levels of sugar in apple juice and different levels of fat, salt and MSG in cookies according to their preferences.found that cultural and age differences were most closely related to children's preferences for varying degrees of sugar and fat.Silvia Bel-Serrat of the University of
Zaragoza, co-author of
study, said: "The results were amazing. Although we usually think that children have a common preference for fat and sugar, in fact we observe that children from different countries have different preferences. Researcherssay such findings could be important for EU-wide dietary policy-making.Anne Lanfer
, lead author of
the study from the Lead Prevention and Epidemiology Institute in Leyme, Germany, said: "Policy now favours a unified diet prevention programme across Europe. However, preferences for food taste vary from country to country, and the same programme will not have the same effect in all countries.researchers examined a number of factors that may affect taste preferences, including age, gender, parental education, early feeding habits, TV shows watched, the use of food as a reward, and the sensitivity threshold for taste - the concentration of sweet, bitter, salty and fresh taste that children can taste.they found that older children tended to prefer sweetness and saltiness, with their preference for sweetness increasing by
34
% and salt preference by
29
% with each age. Apart from age and culture, no other factors that significantly affect a child's preferences have been found.specifically,
70
percent of German children prefer fat-added cookies, compared with
35
percent of Cypriot children. However, most German children prefer pure apple juice, while children in Sweden, Italy and Hungary prefer sweeter varieties.
'
means that taste preferences are influenced by cultural factors, but we've also seen these flavors develop in a similar way as children grow older," says Lanfer
. ”