Faddy+Eating

Infants go through two main stages in learning to accept foods.

Acceptance in the first year of life:

• Infants learn to like the foods that they are given and that they see others around them eating.
  
• They get used to the taste of the food, the texture of the food, and then identify the food by the way that it looks.

Rejection in the second year of life:

• The food is rejected on sight.
• There is a visual mismatch between the foods that they have learned to like, and the new food.

Neophobia means fear of the new. When this term is used with children in their response to food, it refers to the fear of new foods. The neophobic stage is seen from around the age of 18 months; it peaks at about two years, and then gradually becomes less strong through the toddler and pre-school years.

It has been suggested that this food refusal response is of evolutionary benefit. Infants who are just starting to be mobile will not put new ‘non-foods’, that might be poisonous, into their mouths.

At the onset of the neophobic stage the toddler might reject foods that are only slightly different from those that they usually eat, for example:

• a broken biscuit may be rejected, but a whole biscuit accepted
• toast that is burnt around the edges may be rejected, but uniformly coloured toast will be accepted.

This extreme rejection occurs because, at the early stages of the neophobic stage, toddlers are focusing on the ‘local’ details of the food; that is how the food differs from the prototype food that they have in their mind’s eye. As toddlers get older, and learn that foods can differ slightly in appearance, but still belong to the same category, then this extreme response disappears (in most children but not all).
Rejection of previously accepted foods.
In a way the term fear of new foods is a little misleading, because at this age toddlers tend to start to reject food that they have eaten before, as well as refusing to try new foods.

The disgust response.
Food is also likely to be rejected at the neophobic stage because of its texture. Toddlers might find the texture of some foods slimy or lumpy, or too chewy. The texture of a food can be inferred by the way that it looks. So toddlers are more likely to reject foods of certain texture on sight.

If the children are:

• very sensitive to the feel of food in the mouth
• forced to eat foods that they have rejected

a strong disgust response to the food can also develop.

Most adults can remember their feelings of disgust at being made to eat a food that they did not like. These foods are usually those with an odd texture e.g. cauliflower cheese, tomatoes, liver. see Factsheet 2.3

Yes, most children, and adults, are to some extent neophobic. Most of us are reluctant to eat new foods and have to get used to them over a period of time. However, this trait is more extreme in some children and adults than in others, and the neophobic response seems to be stronger towards some foods than towards others.

The neophobic response is a normal developmental stage, but with some variation.

• The response tends to gradually become less marked as the child gets older.
• By the age of five years many children are able to accept new foods without protest.

The rejection of meat and fish seems to be genetically determined, whereas the acceptance of sweet foods and puddings is not. This is possibly because a preference for sweeter foods and easy textures is learned through exposure, whereas the reaction to food with a strong sensory component, such as a difficult texture or strong smell, is inherited.

Although most children will grow out of the extreme neophobic response, there is a small group of children, mainly boys, who do not. These children may carry on to later childhood with an extremely limited range of foods accepted, and a strong fear response towards new foods. see Factsheet 2.3