Consumer testing with children on food combination for school lunch

Awareness of how important food and food culture are to the quality of children's life is a presupposition that promotes research in the sector of school lunch. The aim of this work was to evaluate liking for meals supplied to primary school refectories of the Municipality of Milan. It appears particularly interesting to investigate consumption of meals in Italy in view of both food combinations and the nutritional aspect of the Mediterranean diet. In addition, meals are typically subdivided into four distinct components in Italy. All the children (120) involved, aged between 7 and 10, supplied liking scores as shown in a previous work [Italian J. Food Sci. 2 (2003) 215] for a set of first courses, second courses, vegetables and fruit/dessert. From results it can be seen that preferences for most dishes of younger children (7 years old) differed from those of the older ones (10 years old). Also, unlike 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children, 7-year-old children supplied steadily higher acceptability scores than the intermediate score on the evaluation scale used. Based on our data, it was shown that children become increasingly aware of their preferences and critical in their choices with growing age.