Parents play a central role in their child’s eating habits; however, as many young children regularly attend childcare, preschool settings are ideal for encouraging children to eat healthily [
73•,
74]. In order to prevent obesity, public health interventions encourage preschool settings to promote healthy eating, in particular, to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables. As a result of this, most day-care settings are required to integrate some nutrition education within the preschool curriculum [
75]. Nutrition education programs in the early years’ settings teach day-care staff, parents, and/or children about the nutritional value of food [
76‐
78]. Interventions which involved parents generally involved giving them nutritional information. For example, Sharma et al. [
79] sent a tip-sheet about modifying home nutrition, whereas Sirikulchayanonta et al. [
80] provided a letter with guidance to motivate and encourage children to eat variety and quantity of fruits and vegetables, and Tabak et al. [
81] gave parents the option to choose one of four newsletters from the following topics: vegetable availability, picky eating, modelling, or family meals. In education programs where children are involved, the sessions are usually interactive and engaging as they incorporate fun activities such as educational stories, drawing, games, gardening, cooking, and tasting [
79,
82,
83].
Nutrition education programs vary in duration from a few weeks to several months, and they usually aim to increase consumption of familiar fruits and vegetables. While they are often successful in increasing vegetable intake in children, the effect sizes are smaller than other interventions such as sensory learning, reward, or taste exposure [
29••,
84,
85••]. One reason for the weaker outcomes may be the over-reliance on self-report (food frequency questionnaires) or assessing proxy measures of intake, such as liking, knowledge, and willingness to taste. More research with accurate intake data is needed, e.g., weighed intake in grams. Another reason why nutrition education may not be as effective as interventions involving hands-on experience is because children gain indirect experience through the curriculum rather than direct exposure to foods by smelling, feeling, and tasting. Therefore, incorporating sensory activities including taste to nutrition programs may provide an opportunity for children to improve both their knowledge and intake of vegetables.