Effect of sensory education on school children’s food perception: A 2-year follow-up study

Abstract We studied the effect of sensory education on taste and odor awareness and food ratings in school children. Second and fifth graders ( n  = 244, 7–11 years at the baseline) from two schools in Helsinki area participated in the study. At the completion of the study at two years, the groups consisted of 96 (education, school one) and 79 (control, school two) students. At baseline and in four follow-up measurements, both groups performed six tasks: (1) free odor naming (five odors), (2) taste identification (six solutions), (3) descriptive characterization of two breads, (4) ratings of the extent to which subjects paid attention to sensory properties of food, (5) willingness-to-try ratings of unfamiliar vs. familiar foods and (6) aided odor naming (five odors, 10 verbal labels). Subsequently, the education group received two waves of sensory education: the first wave comprised of 10 Classes du gout lessons and the 2nd of 5 lessons familiarizing the children with different food categories. The second wave was performed only for 2/3 of the education group. The educated children improved their skills in identifying tastes and odors, and characterizing foods, while no difference was seen in the performance of the control group. However, effects of education were mainly observed for the younger children only. Although the improvements were small and not always consistent over the study period, their general direction was encouraging: the sensory education activated children’s odor and taste perceptions and improved their ability to describe sensory properties of food.