OASES · Outcomes Assessment of Sensory Education in Schools

Outcomes Assessment of Sensory Education in Schools

Diet related ill health is a major threat to public health and the sustainability of health services. Low consumption of vegetables and fruit amongst children is a particular concern in the UK. Food fussiness and neophobia have been identified as major barriers to greater consumption. Sensory food education aims to grow children’s confidence and enjoyment in food tasting, to support the development of healthy dietary variety. This action develops conducts a randomised controlled trial to assess outcomes assessment of the ‘Flavour School’ sensory food education programme, implemented in UK primary schools. It targets early primary school children, age 4-7 years, with particular focus on fruit and vegetables. This action has been heavily disrupted by pandemic Covid19 and related restrictions. Some compromises have been necessary to complete the trial, and some work on write-up and publication of results remains to be completed at grant end. The study protocol has been published in the journal Trials, and the trial is registered at ISRCTN40249947. We designed a simple, low pressure tasting activity along the lines of a Flavour School activity. Children participated in the activity before and after the Flavour School intervention. We video recorded the activity and observed the number of items tasted, the number of bites and licks, and the valence (positive/neutral/negative) of their facial expressions. This yielded a very rich description of the children's tasting behaviour. The results showed surprisingly high baseline acceptance in the tasting activity, and even higher at follow up (p < 0.005), but by similar amounts in both the control and the experimental group. The intervention had no significant effect on tasting behaviour in our sample of children. Most children engaged from the start and did not need the extra sensory activities to encourage tasting. This high acceptance included many children who were rated by parents as particularly food fussy/neo-phobic/reluctant. We interpret this to suggest that tasting behaviour depends on context. Children who are reluctant to taste at mealtimes may be much more willing in the context of a low-consequence tasting activity in school. The sensory tasting activities provided a context in which even normally fussy children will taste vegetables and fruit. But this happened at baseline in our study, and extra sensory activities did not turn fussy children into less fussy children at follow-up. Facial expressions measures changed little on average across both groups, and children’s ‘food personalities’ were quite stable between baseline and follow up. Sensory and tasting activities in school class-time offer a powerful context for broadening children's food horizons, but less so for tasting behaviour change. We did not observe children's mealtime or home eating behaviour in this study.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union