A dynamic method to measure the evolution of liking during food consumption in 8- to 10-year-old children

As a result of sensory specific satiation, liking of a food decreases with its consumption. However, food liking is most often assessed once for a small quantity of products. In adults, new techniques have been developed to record changes in liking during consumption of a full portion of food. However, these temporal techniques have never been applied in children so far. The first objective was to develop a new method for hedonic assessment in a dynamic manner with school-aged children in a naturalistic setting of consumption at school. The second objective was to compare the regular liking evaluation (static liking) with the dynamic one (6 successive assessments during consumption of a full portion), using a linear scale containing 7 labels. To do so, 48 8- to 10-year-old children (19 boys and 29 girls) were enrolled in the study. Children were invited to take part in four snacks (2 static liking assessments and 2 dynamic liking assessments, in alternation) involving tasting fruit purées. Before and after each snack, the children also evaluated how hungry they were on a new 5-point unstructured scale. The results showed that the temporal measure was sensitive enough to capture a decrease in liking during the consumption of a full portion. In addition, the average liking score assessed with the static method was similar to the average liking score of the 1st evaluation with the dynamic method. Moreover, the decrease in liking during consumption was significantly linked to the decrease in the level of hunger. In conclusion, this new method appears to be suitable for measuring dynamic liking with school-aged children.