Sweetness preferences in 1-year-old children who fail to thrive

To investigate the possibility that failure to thrive is associated with a reduced hedonic response to sweet tastes, 28 1-year-old children who failed to thrive in infancy were identified using a conditional weight gain criterion ('thrive index'). Controls of the same age and sex were recruited from the same local geographical area. Twenty seven cases and 26 controls completed the study. On average the cases had gained 2.54 kg less in weight than the control children since birth. Comparisons of their intakes of water and 0.2 and 0.4 M sucrose solutions in brief tests showed significantly higher intakes of the sweet solutions ( F (2, 102) = 4.93, p < 0.01), though the 0.4 M solution was not preferred to the 0.2 M solution. There was no significant difference between the children who failed to thrive and the controls ( F (1,51) = 0.76, p > 0.1) nor was there a significant group by sucrose concentration interaction ( F (2, 102) = 0.51, p > 0.1). This study confirms the hedonic response of children of this age to sweet tastes, and shows that children who fail to thrive in infancy respond in the same way as control children.