Fig 1. Experimental design.

This includes the initial study with early exposure with flavor variety at the very beginning of complementary feeding and the short-term tests on new food acceptance. In the follow-up studies, we tested the persistence of these effects, measuring acceptance of vegetables when the children were about 15 months, 3 and 6 years of age. The measurements conducted at each follow-up are reported in the present paper. During the initial intervention (day 2 to 10) there were 3 groups of variety exposure at home: the ‘No’ variety group received carrot (Ca) every day, the 2 other groups were offered artichoke (Ar), Green beans (Gb) and pumpkin (Pu) for but the ‘Low’ variety group was given each purée for 3 consecutive days and there were daily changes for the ‘High’ variety group. In the initial study (7) acceptance of new foods (puréed zucchini-tomato mix (ZT) was evaluated at day 12, puréed peas (Pe) at day 23, meat purée (Me) when decided by the mother (so after a variable delay, mean ± SE: 21.7 ± 1.8 days) and fish purée (Fi) 13 days after this. In each of the 3 variety groups, there were ‘formula-fed’ and ‘breast-fed’ infants (i.e. who had been breast-fed for less than 15 days and more than 30 days, respectively).