BRINGING DOWN BARRIERS TO CHILDREN’S HEALTHY EATING

Project Information

Edulia

Grant agreement ID: 764985

DOI

10.3030/764985

Project closed

EC signature date 3 August 2017

Start date 1 February 2018

End date 31 July 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 2 933 056,80

EU contribution

€ 2 933 056,80

Coordinated by

NOFIMA AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Edulia (BRINGING DOWN BARRIERS TO CHILDREN’S HEALTHY EATING)

Reporting period: 2020-02-01 to 2022-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Edulia responded to the urgent need to find new ways to tackle the escalating issue of obesity, through promoting healthier eating from childhood. Based on the relations between sensory perception, pleasure, food choice and food behaviour, the project looked for new approaches to drive children to like and actively choose healthy foods, developing healthier dietary habits. Edulia has been a multi-disciplinary and inter-sectorial European Training and Research Network with a global reach. Our network trained 11 innovative and adaptable researchers in high-level skills across complementary fields through studying children’s food choices, 9 of them obtained a PhD degree during the project duration, the other two are on their way. The training program included multidisciplinary scientific training, secondments in academic and non-academic organisations, and courses in transferable skills, promoting science communication and outreach.
The overall aim of the research programme was to better understand how multiple factors act as barriers for children’s healthy eating and how to tackle them, bringing together leading scientists in the Food Choice arena in a collaborative network that will transcend the limits of this project and strengthen European research. Edulia will develop social marketing and nudging strategies, study peer and family social interactions and social media marketing, identify sensory and non-sensory parameters that influence what is eaten (food choice) and how much is eaten (intake), and develop products which can drive healthy eating through sensory pleasure. We will explore children’s food choices in real settings, observing eating behaviour and social interaction, in parallel to food preferences and food intake. We will ultimately propose innovative approaches to support children’s healthier eating, providing a strong knowledge base and clear guidance to the general public, the food industry and EU policy makers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Sensory perception and Food Choice: preadolescents are able to identify the basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter among the complex flavour profile of various unfamiliar foods, that is to say without relying on memory and former knowledge of the food item.
Methods development: good progress in the development and optimization of methods for studying preadolescents food perception, measure of emotions and new statistical approaches for analysing individual differences.
Healthy food product development: added-sugar in dairy products for preadolescents can be greatly reduced without affecting their liking, strategies could be rapidly implemented in the industry without affecting markets. Cross-modal interactions could contribute to minimizing the sensory changes caused by sugar reduction, enabling larger reductions in the context of gradual sugar reduction programs.
Sensory influences on food liking and satiation (infants, toddlers, preschoolers): Paediatricians considered their responsibility counselling parents on complementary feeding and parents acknowledged them as the most influential source of advice. However, paediatricians neglected that parents gave almost the same level of trust to their social network, followed by internet and apps. Diverging from what paediatricians consider useful, parents were interested in practical advice to implement CF, such as recipes examples.
Social influences on healthy eating habits impact of parenting and of interactions with peers. Ambivalent impact of feeding practices on eating behaviours is observed. Young children with higher levels of food neophobia show less development in thematically associated food pairs, than children with low neophobia. Belongingness to peer group and need for peer approval are linked to preadolescents’ perceived injunctive peer norms of healthy eating, which are associated with higher vegetable intake. Siblings’ support for healthy eating and eating with siblings are linked with higher vegetable intake.
Children´s healthy eating environment, nudging and social marketing for change: transition to parenthood represents a turning point for eating behaviour changes. The findings pointed to an opposite cross-country perception of the impact of parenthood on food behaviours, and to the idea of an “equalizing effect” on individuals’ diet, where having a child triggered “unhealthy” eaters to consider dietary improvements while it imposed challenges to “healthy” eaters to maintain their satisfactory food habits.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Edulia innovated by developing, testing and understanding key principles of interventions targeting a positive and enabling food environment for children, with a child-focused approach. This could only be achieved when (1) there is direct input from children in product development to reflect their taste and perspective, (2) there is insight into individual differences in responding to healthy foods to better target interventions, (3) healthy eating is self-motivating, 'normal' and effortless (nudging).
We aimed to understanding direct input from children into product development to formulate healthy products that children would actively choose and eat. Edulia will explore children’s individuality on sensory sensitivity, liking, and how exposure influences overeating, for recommending regulation strategies. We will propose how to design physical and social surroundings to nudge children into healthy eating, contributing to habit formation. Edulia will go further than “teaching children what is healthy”, through positive marketing, nudging strategies, focusing on peer and family social interactions in real settings, studying sensory and non-sensory parameters underlying overeating and exploiting the positive sensory characters of healthy food. Particularly innovative aspects in Edulia are: children-driven NPD, adapted data collection methods and cutting-edge approaches as the use of nudging, text mining big data, social media marketing or design-driven co-creation.
Our research will fill gaps between academic research and practitioner knowledge and creating a specialised workforce directed to tackle the problem of children’s unhealthy eating from a multidisciplinary perspective, contributing to a sustainable benefit to the EU.
ESRs in the network experienced cross-sector opportunities, opening new career perspectives and becoming more successful in networking due to their cross-border training and the exposure to researchers from the EU and beyond.
Edulia linked to Eurodoc and other PhD associations strengthening communication with other early stage researchers.
Edulia aimed to strengthen innovation capacity in EU, bringing ideas from lab to market and generating innovative social tools that allow recommendations for health policies.
Beneficiaries have recruited first-class ESRs, adding to their competences. Edulia has strengthened the links among them, generating lasting collaborations. Our healthy product development projects will hopefully impact the food industry. Further impact will be attained through communication to the public, links to other EU projects, to the industry and to Policy Makers.
All our ESRs were women, and we have promoted the role of women in science through our communication.
More than 30 scientific papers are published by the project, with 20 more in the pipeline. We will continue updating our website, with links to publications, executive summaries and reports .

 

How to nudge preadolescents towards helthier choices? Peer influence is key in shaping preferences