Body teaches children to prefer fats.Children are born liking sweets (SN: 2/15/92, p.110), but they quickly learn to also enjoy "energy-dense" foods - generally, those high in fat. Luckily for nutrition-conscious parents, children also learn to like low-fat foods if they are exposed to them often enough, says Leann L. Birch birch, common name for some members of the Betulaceae, a family of deciduous trees or shrubs bearing male and female flowers on separate plants, widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. , a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University Pennsylvania State University, main campus at University Park, State College; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1855, opened 1859 as Farmers' High School. in University Park. In their efforts to understand why children choose to eat the foods they do, Birch, Deborah L. Kern Kern, river, 155 mi (249 km) long, rising in the S Sierra Nevada Mts., E Calif., and flowing south, then southwest to a reservoir in the extreme southern part of the San Joaquin valley. The river has Isabella Dam as its chief facility. of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Early years: 1867-1880 The Morrill Act of 1862 granted each state in the United States a portion of land on which to establish a major public state university, one which could teach agriculture, mechanic arts, and military training, "without excluding other scientific , and their colleagues evaluated the taste preferences of 27 children between the ages of 3 and 4. Twice a week for six weeks, scientists asked one subset of the children to drink yogurt yogurt: see fermented milk. yogurt Semisolid, fermented, often flavoured milk food. Yogurt is known and consumed in almost all parts of the world. shakes of different flavors and fat contents. One day during the week, the children received fat-free yogurt containing 66 calories; on the other, they consumed yogurt with 18 grams of fat and 228 calories. Before and several times during the test period, the researchers asked the children which flavors they preferred. A second group of kids tasted different-flavored yogurts but did not actually eat them. "We see very clearly that children learn to prefer the flavors that are paired with high energy densities," says Birch. "[This] helps us understand why reducing dietary fats is so difficult." The children who only tasted the yogurts, however, began to like the more familiar flavors better regardless of the calorie calorie, abbr. cal, unit of heat energy in the metric system. The measurement of heat is called calorimetry. The calorie, or gram calorie, is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of pure water 1°C;. content, indicating that repeated exposure to foods can increase acceptance of them, adds Birch. She suggests that parents try to offer low-fat foods and snacks frequently to their children. |
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