A group of young gourmets making a pizza, under the watchful eye of PhD candidate Lotte Pater (bottom left in the picture). Own photo DIY tasks, a face-to-face interview and a cooking workshop with classmates. Those are elements of a study by the PhD candidate Lotte Pater (Consumer Sciences). She is trying to find out in real-life contexts what young children think of plant-based meat substitutes.
And that’s not just a question of asking them, Pater explains. ‘Exploratory consumer research is often done using structured interviews. But children often clam up when you unexpectedly ask them what they think about anything, because it feels like an interrogation.’ Pater therefore developed methods in which the children get to know the research topic and can then express themselves in their own way.
Her studies resulted in two scientific publications in a very short time, one about what children think of plant-based foods appeared just before the end of last year and the other – a reflection on the creative research methods – is appearing this month.
Directly and indirectly
It’s very important to know what younger children think of foods. Pater: ‘They affect what is put on their family’s table, both directly and indirectly. Children may for instance actively ask their parents if they could please eat a pasta sauce made with lentils for a change, because they know it from school or friends. On the other hand, parents take account – consciously or otherwise – of what the kids want to eat. They want to put something on the table that the child likes, that they’ll eat with no fuss. That’s the indirect influence.’
Expectations
Pater gave children a play box of DIY and other tasks and various plant-based meat substitute products. ‘Tasks like drawing, writing and colouring are difficult to interpret as research results, of course, but being involved with the subject matter in that way teaches the children about the material and gives them more self-confidence to talk about it. That helps them give their opinions later in the face-to-face chats. During the cooking session at the end, we got to know more about the interactions with other children and about what is known as the “mealtime context”. Children rarely eat alone and never eat one product in isolation.’
‘Various research methods gave different results,’ says Pater. ‘In the first instance, children were positive in particular about the analogues (see inset, ed.), because those look like what they know. Later, during the interviews and the cooking workshop, they found the substitutes and replacements more attractive. Part of that is because the analogues didn’t come up to their expectations. The ham analogue doesn’t taste quite the same as ham meat, so it’s disappointing. For the substitutes and replacements, they hadn’t expected them to taste like anything they already knew.’ The fact that the children were presented with all the meat alternatives and made the meal themselves enhanced the positive attitude towards the less familiar substitutes and replacements.
Pizza
‘Children are very open to new products,’ says Pater, ‘especially if you process them into a meal they already know. This was about various plant-based toppings for pizzas, but in another study I also looked at lentils as an alternative to meat in spaghetti sauce. If you involve children in the preparation process and the food is presented to them in a mealtime context, they are very positive.’
‘What this study also shows is that it’s perfectly possible to involve children in scientific research, even if they can’t participate fully in the standard research methods. If you first help them and encourage them to get to know a topic in a trusted environment, they are then ready to be very open about it. Even to a complete stranger.’
Analogues, replacements and substitutes
Pater uses three different types of plant-based alternatives to meat in her study: analogues, replacements and substitutes. The analogues are the ready-to-eat meat alternatives, the replacements are the more natural alternatives to meat such as tofu and tempeh that have comparable nutritional properties to meat, and the substitutes are the alternatives to meat from other categories such as lentils and nuts that have comparable culinary properties. These all tend to get called ‘vervangers’ in Dutch.
