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6.1
Primary School Age Children
Summary
●● Children prefer familiar foods and most need to ●● Secondary school children make more of their
be motivated to try new foods. own food choices and many do not satisfy their
nutrient needs.
●● Children innately prefer sweet, salty and
energy-dense foods. ●● School meals make a nutritious contribution to
children’s dietary intake, especially those
●● Parents and carers are responsible for food entitled to free school meals.
offered to primary school age children and
have the power and influence to change eating ●● Food and nutrient-based standards for school
habits. meals are in place in England, Scotland and
Wales. Northern Ireland has food-based
●● Primary school children generally satisfy their standards.
nutrient needs.
Primary school children should be eating a diet ●● Food availability and accessibility and taste
broadly in line with a balance of the food groups in preferences are the most important
the ‘eatwell plate’ as discussed in Chapter 1.2. determinants of children’s choice and
consumption of particular foods.
Influences on Food Tastes and
Preferences ●● As parents and carers are responsible for the
foods offered to children, they have the power to
From the age of about 5 years, children tend to eat influence and change children’s eating habits.
from social cues like adults rather than regulating
their energy intake according to their needs as do ●● Parental control over what and how much
most infants and toddlers. This means they eat when children can eat influences food preferences but
others are eating even when they are not hungry and sometimes in a counterproductive way.
eat more of the foods they particularly like. Restricting a food such as chocolate can make it
even more attractive and likely to be selected
Many children continue to prefer foods with and eaten in situations where parents are not
which they are familiar rather than trying new present.
foods. They need to be motivated to taste new
foods. Work in this field (Hill 2002, Cooke 2007, ●● Parents are key role models – children model
Brug et al. 2008, Scaglioni et al. 2008) continues to their own eating behaviour from their
show evidence for the following factors: observations of their parents’ eating.
●● Children innately prefer sweet, salty and energy- ●● From around 7 years of age, preferences and
dense foods. behaviours of peer groups begin to have a
stronger inf luence on children’s food
choices.
