Exposure to a slightly sweet lipid-based nutrient supplement during early life does not increase the level of sweet taste most preferred among 4- to 6-year-old Ghanaian children: follow-up of a randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Copper (Supplement) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The researchers tested the hypothesis that the level of sucrose most preferred by 4-6-y-old children exposed to a slightly sweet lipid-based nutrient supplement (LNS) early in life would not be higher than that of children never exposed to LNS.

At age 4-6 y, the researchers randomly selected a subsample of children (n = 775) to assess the concentration of sucrose most preferred using the Monell 2-series, forced-choice, paired-comparison tracking procedure.

Why It Was Studied

The impact of feeding a slightly sweet nutrient supplement early in life on later sweet taste preference is unknown.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are infants, young children and children, both men and women.

The researchers followed up children born to women (n = 1,320) who participated in a randomized trial in Ghana.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Copper (Supplement) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Food Preferences, Ghana, Infant Food, Lipid Metabolism, Nutrients, Sucrose and Taste.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Monell forced-choice test, children, lipid-based nutrient supplement and sweet taste preference.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Copper (Supplement).

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2019 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.