Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:17:36.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Children and food

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

Michael Siegal
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Candida C. Peterson
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Get access

Summary

As young omnivores, children need to learn an enormous amount about food and eating. Fortunately, eating occurs frequently each day, providing many opportunities for learning to occur. From birth to 5 years, food intake patterns change dramatically, and change occurs in food selection as well as in the number and timing of meals. For example, during the first weeks of life, it is not uncommon for an infant to consume ten meals in a twenty-four-hour period. By the preschool period, children are consuming three regularly scheduled meals each day. The reduction in the number of meals reflects a shift from depletion-driven eating to eating meals on a culturally acceptable schedule. Regarding what is eaten, infants of all cultures begin life consuming an exclusive milk diet. During the second half of the first year of life, dramatic dietary changes occur as infants make the transition from consuming a single food to selecting foods that compose a modified adult diet. At weaning, the diets of children from different cultural groups begin to diverge, so that by the age of 4 or 5, children of different cultural groups may be consuming diets that share no foods in common.

To investigate how children's food acceptance patterns develop during these first years of life, multiple disciplinary perspectives must be adopted; cultural, social, psychological, and physiological factors all affect the developing child's food selection and the timing and size of meals.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×