Intervention studies have shown that encouraging children to eat healthily through incentives combined with taste exposure can increase both intake and liking. This randomized controlled trial was conducted to test the hypothesis that parent-administered repeated taste exposures to an initially disliked vegetable combined with reward will increase children’s liking and intake in a home setting. Families with children aged 3–4 years (n = 173) were randomly assigned to exposure + tangible reward (sticker), exposure + social reward (praise), or no-treatment control conditions after a pretest assessment in which a target vegetable was selected for each child. In the intervention groups, parents offered their children 12 daily tastes of the vegetable, giving either praise or a sticker for tasting. The exposure + tangible rewards group increased their intake (P = 0.001) and liking (P = 0.001) of their target vegetable significantly more than the control group. Differences were maintained at the three-month follow-up (intake: P = 0.005; liking: P = 0.001). No significant differences were found between the exposure + social reward and control groups. These findings support parental use of tangible rewards with repeated taste exposures to improve children’s diets.Am J Clin Nutr. 2012 Jan;95(1):72-7. PMID: 22158728
