Early Conceptual Knowledge About Food

Recent research suggests that preschool (three- to six-years-old) children’s food
cognition involves much more than the nutritional information usually conveyed by
traditional food education programs. This review aims at collecting the empirical
evidence documenting the richness of preschoolers’ conceptual knowledge about
food. After introducing the relevance of the topic in the context of the research in
early food rejection dispositions (Sect. 1), we draw from empirical contributions
to propose the first classification of food knowledge in the field, which includes
taxonomic (2.1.), relational (2.2.), and value-laden food knowledge (2.3.). Finally,
in Sect. 3, we highlight some theoretical shortcomings of extant literature, suggest-
ing that the account of food knowledge we propose could be employed to develop
more effective educational strategies that mitigate early food rejection behaviors
(e.g., food neophobia).
Early conceptual knowledge about food.