Nearly 77% Of Children Show Moderate Reluctance To Try New Foods In Addagutta Urban Community: ICMR-NIN Study
The study found an association between children’s willingness to try different foods: Reports
HYDERABAD: Nearly 77 per cent of children aged two to seven years showed moderate reluctance to try unfamiliar foods, while 11.3 per cent had high levels of food neophobia, the fear of anything new, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN) here conducted in Addagutta, an urban community.
The study found an association between children’s willingness to try different foods, their nutritional status and their mothers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices related to feeding.
The study, ‘Food neophobia and its determinants among children aged 2–7 years: The role of maternal knowledge, attitudes and practices: A cross-sectional
study,’ was published in the Journal of Nutritional Science. It examined 150 mother-child pairs in Addagutta, an urban low-income community in Hyderabad, between August and October 2025.
Researchers assessed children’s reluctance to try unfamiliar foods using the child food neophobia scale. Maternal feeding knowledge, attitudes and practices were assessed through a structured questionnaire, while children’s nutritional status was evaluated using World Health Organisation (WHO) anthropometric standards.
The study found that 12 per cent of children had low levels of food neophobia. Boys had higher average scores than girls, although the differences in the proportions of children across the low, moderate and high categories were not statistically significant.Children with wasting had higher food neophobia scores than those without wasting, indicating an association between nutritional status and reluctance to try diverse foods. Children, whose mothers had moderate knowledge, attitude and practice scores also had lower food neophobia scores than those whose mothers had low scores.
Dr Karthikeyan Ramanujam, Scientist-C at NIN and lead researcher, said early childhood nutrition programmes should focus more on everyday feeding practices.These include repeatedly offering children a variety of foods without pressuring them, creating positive mealtime experiences and responding supportively when they refuse unfamiliar foods.
ICMR-NIN director Dr Bharati Kulkarni said the findings highlighted an opportunity to strengthen behavioural feeding counselling through existing maternal and child health programmes, including the integrated child development services and POSHAN Abhiyaan.
The researchers cautioned that the study was conducted in a single urban community and involved a relatively small sample, limiting the extent to which the findings could be generalised. As it was a cross-sectional study, it could establish associations but not cause-and-effect relationships.