Does an intervention based on the pleasure of eating healthy foods could favour a positive relationship between food liking and perceived healthiness in children?

International audienceIt is generally admitted that consumers perceived unhealthy foods as tastier than healthy foods. However, the opposite association was found in French adults (Werle et al., 2013). Moreover, Marty et al. (2018) found that French children liked healthy foods as much as unhealthy foods. However, the link between liking and perceived healthiness in children needs to be further investigated, in particular at the individual level. Thus, our study aims, first at assessing the link between liking and perceived healthiness in children and, second at determining whether this potential link was modified after an intervention promoting pleasure of consuming healthy foods. To do this, mother-child dyads (n=187, 7-11 years) were invited for two sessions (T1 and T2) in which they were asked to choose two food items (among 10) for a mid-afternoon snack. Participants also rated their liking and their perceived healthiness for all items using 5-point scales. After T1, the participants were randomly assigned in an experimental condition in which they received a pleasure-based programme aimed at stimulating the pleasure of eating healthy foods for mid-afternoon snack, or in a control condition in which they received a programme focused on culinary arts. The results indicated that, in the experimental group, the median of the individual correlations between liking and perceived healthiness for the 10 food items was not different from 0 at T1, increased significantly between T1 and T2 and became significantly positive at T2. For the control group, the median correlation was not different from 0 at T1, did not change between T1 and T2 and remains not different from 0 at T2. This study offers a promising alternative to nutrition-focused interventions, highlighting that a food pleasure intervention could reinforce the link between food liking and perceived healthiness in children