Food neophobia - natural developmental stage or feeding difficulty? A study of children's behavior and parents' knowledge about children’s neophobic behaviors

Białek-Dratwa Agnieszka, Grajek Mateusz. Food neophobia - natural developmental stage or feeding difficulty? A study of children's behavior and parents' knowledge about children’s neophobic behaviors. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2022;12(7):301-314. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/JEHS.2022.12.07.029 https://apcz.umk.pl/JEHS/article/view/JEHS.2022.12.07.029 https://zenodo.org/record/6791267 The journal has had 40 points in Ministry of Education and Science of Poland parametric evaluation. Annex to the announcement of the Minister of Education and Science of December 21, 2021. No. 32343. Has a Journal's Unique Identifier: 201159. Scientific disciplines assigned: Physical Culture Sciences (Field of Medical sciences and health sciences); Health Sciences (Field of Medical Sciences and Health Sciences). Punkty Ministerialne z 2019 - aktualny rok 40 punktów. Załącznik do komunikatu Ministra Edukacji i Nauki z dnia 21 grudnia 2021 r. Lp. 32343. Posiada Unikatowy Identyfikator Czasopisma: 201159. Przypisane dyscypliny naukowe: Nauki o kulturze fizycznej (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu); Nauki o zdrowiu (Dziedzina nauk medycznych i nauk o zdrowiu). © The Authors 2022; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 20.06.2022. Revised: 20.06.2022. Accepted: 02.07.2022. Food neophobia - natural developmental stage or feeding difficulty? A study of children's behavior and parents' knowledge about children’s neophobic behaviors Agnieszka Białek-Dratwa1, Mateusz Grajek2 1 Department of Human Nutrition, Department of Dietetics, Faculty of Health Sciences in Bytom, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Jordana 19, 41-808 Zabrze, Poland; ORCID: 0000-0002-7798-6424; abialek@sum.edu.pl 2 Department of Public Health, Department of Public Health Policy, Faculty of Health Sciences in Bytom, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Piekarska 18, 41-902 Bytom, Poland; ORCID: 0000-0001-6588-8598; mgrajek@sum.edu.pl *Correspondence: abialek@sum.edu.pl Jordana 19, 41-808 Zabrze, Poland; Abstract Background: An increasing number of parents report problems with feeding their children to dieticians. Failure to expand the diet or sudden discontinuation of a variety of foods makes them increasingly worried about their child's monotonous diet and mealtime behavior The aim of this study was to assess parents' awareness of food neophobia and the attitudes and behaviors associated with it. Material and method: The study was carried out using a questionnaire-based indirect survey technique using a web form (CAWI). A total of 224 adults (parents of preschool children) participated in the study. The research tool was an anonymous survey questionnaire consisting of three parts. In the last part, a scale concerning neophobic behavior was used. The study group consisted mainly of mothers - 78.3% (n=159); fathers - 21.7% (n= 44). Results: In the study group, no child scored several points indicating a very high probability of neophobia. A high probability is possible in 28 children (13.79%), a possible predisposition to the occurrence of food neophobia exists in 66 children (32.51%), while 109 children (53.69%) do not present a predisposition to food neophobia. Conclusions: The study did not show children's behaviors reported by parents that could indicate a very high probability of food neophobia in their children. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire of neophobia scale indicate that this problem in the studied population concerns about 10% of the examined children. Keywords: food neophobia; parents; children; child nutrition; neophobic behavior