Research challenges and methods to study food preferences in school-aged children: A review of the last 15 years

• We examined the progress made from 2000 to 2015 in consumer testing with children.
• Feeding behavior and healthy eating are the main research areas in the last 15 years.
• Traditional and new approaches to assess child’s hedonic response are discussed.
• Implicit approaches seem promising to better interpret child’s food preference.
• Children (4–11 years) can perform advanced methods if age-appropriate protocols are used.

Until only a few decades ago, there was little interest in research about children as consumers. Today, the food market for ‘‘the small consumers’’ is continuously growing and many foods and beverages are developed specifically for this target group. Furthermore, a better understanding of children’s food preferences could help design strategies to reduce obesity and malnutrition. The present review examines the main research domains in which measurements of children’s food preferences are applied. It also gives an overview of the progress made during the last 15 years in the field of consumer testing with children, highlighting the need of investigating and using new methods in addition to existing ones. Attention is devoted to the choice of specific methods according to the child’s age.An intense interest in consumer and sensory research with children is demonstrated by the systematic increase of scientific publications on this topic. A shift in research methodology has been observed in the last 15 years, being research more focused on feeding behavior and healthy eating. Recent investigations confirm that children in the age range of 4–11 years are able to perform most traditional consumer tests in addition to more sophisticated methods (e.g. projective mapping, memory and emotion evaluation) if age-appropriate procedures are adopted.