Skip to main content
OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT03348176

Baby's First Bites: Promoting Vegetable Intake in Infants and Toddlers

Overweight and obesity in preschool children is more and more common and predicts overweight in later childhood and adulthood. A healthy eating pattern with many vegetables decreases the risk to develop overweight. As many food preferences are learned in the first years of life, teaching children to like vegetables from the very start of eating solid foods is essential. Starting baby's first bites of solid foods with vegetables instead of more sweet tastes like fruits may promote vegetable liking. Also, it is important that parents know how to feed their children: e.g., paying attention to whether the child is hungry or full is essential, as is not pressuring them to eat. What is yet unknown is which of these two are more important to promote, to facilitate vegetable liking in young children. Is starting with vegetables most important, or educating parents on their feeding-techniques? And is a combination of both most effective? This study tests which of three interventions is most effective to promote vegetable intake and liking in children up until the age of 3 years: a) a focus on the 'what' (starting with vegetables); b) a focus on the 'how' (listen to your child's cues while feeding); c) a focus on both the 'what' and the 'how'. These three groups will be compared to a control group receiving no advice on how to introduce solid foods on children's vegetable intake and liking.

Completed

Looking for future studies?

Notify Me

Key information

Conditions

Vegetable Acceptance in Early Childhood Body Weight Childhood Obesity Childhood Overweight Nutrition Disorders Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases Obesity Overnutrition Overweight Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms Pediatric Obesity Signs and Symptoms

Age range

4 month–3 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Leiden University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Education and Child Studies, Leiden, Netherlands

Loading trial locations.

About this study

The weaning period in infancy is an important time for introducing healthy eating patterns that include vegetables to protect children against the development of overweight. There is evidence that it is important what weaning infants are offered: starting exclusively with vegetables is more successful for the promotion of vegetable acceptance than starting with fruits. There is also evidence that it is important how infants are weaned: responsive feeding characterised by sensitive responses to infant cues during feeding fosters healthy eating. However, the what and the how of infant weaning have never been experimentally tested in the same study to determine their relative importance for fostering vegetable acceptance, nor have they been combined to test whether a focus on both may be superior to each approach separately. This study employs a randomised controlled design testing the effectiveness of (a) a focus on the what in weaning, i.e., a vegetable-exposure intervention; (b) a focus on the how in weaning, i.e., an intervention to enhance responsive feeding; (c) a combined focus on what and how in weaning in an integrated intervention; (d) an attention-control group. Vegetable acceptance will be measured before and directly after the interventions when the child is 18 months of age, and when the child is 24 and 36 months of age. The proposed study is based on a unique integration of expert knowledge from the field of nutrition and the field of parenting, which will provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying the development of vegetable acceptance in infants, and ultimately the prevention of overweight.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

First-time mothers of healthy term infants who report to have good reading and writing skills in the Dutch language

Exclusion criteria

  • Medical problems in the infant that influence the ability to eat
  • Major psychiatric problems in the mother, like depression
  • Mothers who are not willing to start weaning exclusively with prepared vegetable/fruit purees from the Nutricia brand
  • Mothers who are not willing for themselves and/or their infants to be video-taped

Treatment and study plan

Vegetable exposure

Other

Repeated exposure to variety of vegetables

VIPP-Feeding Infants

Behavioral

Promoting responsive feeding practices

Control

Other

Phone calls with mother about development of child, no advice on complementary feeding

Primary outcomes

  1. Change in vegetable intake

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Intake of vegetables as measured by 3 days of 24hr recall electronic diaries (using the Compl-eat system developed at Wageningen University)

  2. Change in vegetable liking

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Liking of vegetables as measured by questionnaire (Barends et al., 2013)

  3. Child self-regulation of energy intake

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 18 months

    Measured experimentally; protocol designed for this study. In essence, children eat a meal at home until they are full, and after a short break are offered a variety of snacks. How much of the snacks they eat is a measure of child self-regulation of energy intake

  4. Change in child self-regulation of energy intake

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Measured by the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire

Secondary outcomes

  1. Change in child eating behavior

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Measured with the Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire

  2. Change in child anthropometrics

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Height and weight of child combined to report zBMI

  3. Change in self-reported maternal feeding style

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Measured with Infant Feeding Style Questionnaire

  4. Change in observed maternal feeding style

    Time frame: Measured at child age of 4-6 months (prior to intervention), 18 months (directly after intervention) and at child age of 24 and 36 months (6 and 18 months follow-up)

    Observed during family meals with an observation scale based on the Responsiveness to Child Feeding Cues Scale (Hodges et al.). Maternal responsiveness to child hunger cues (scale range 1 (very unresponsive) - 5 (very responsive); higher score is better) and pacing (scale range 1 ((almost) never adequate - 5 (almost) Always adequate; higher score is better) will be coded

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Universiteit Leiden

Other

Collaborators

  • Danone Global Research & Innovation Center
  • Nutricia, Inc.
  • Wageningen University

Registry information

Official study title

The What and How in Weaning: A Randomized Controlled Trial to Assess the Effects of Vegetable-exposure and Responsive Feeding on Vegetable Acceptance in Infants and Toddlers

Important dates

Study start
2016
Primary completion
2020
Study completion
2020
First posted
Nov 20, 2017
Registry last updated
Nov 17, 2020

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

Related clinical trials

Published trials that share one or more normalized conditions with this study.