RATIONALE

Obesity is a key public health concern which has received renewed publicity in the UK following the publication of a report by the House of Commons Health Select Committee which states that the cost of obesity nationally is £6.6–7.4 billion per year.1 All age groups are suffering increased proportions of obesity but childhood obesity rates are increasing faster than adult rates, as is the consumption of high fat and high sugar foods.2 Possible explanations for rising obesity include an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and changes in dietary patterns and eating habits.3 The National Diet and Nutritional Survey4 found that children’s consumption of fruit and vegetables had fallen during the last 20 years, half the children surveyed eating neither fruit nor vegetables during the survey week. Worryingly, only one in ten poor children were found to have eaten fruit or vegetables in any given week.5 Targeting nutrition education at the young, therefore, might seem obvious. Obese children often become obese adults as their eating and exercise patterns persist into adult life.6 However, Birch and Fisher7 dispute this premise, arguing that although each adult is a distinctive bundle of food likes and dislikes, surprisingly little is known about how these preferences are acquired and that even less is known about whether preferences and dietary patterns formed in childhood persist into adulthood. Multiple forces work in shaping knowledge, attitude and behaviour to culturally prominent or culturally despised foods in the under-sevens children’s population.7 In England as a whole nutrition education for five to eleven year-olds forms part of the Design an