About FeedQuest (the sciencey bit!)

FeedQuest has been developed drawing on a vast body of scientific literature. A scoping review of 246 journal articles, and a workshop held with many healthcare and community service providers who work with young children, highlighted multiple factors that influence preschool children's dietary intakes. The weight of evidence appeared to lie in strategies parents use to feed their children (known as parental feeding practices), and some of the psychological traits of the child, namely their level of food fussiness. However, evidence also pointed to the fact that these factors are connected, that parental feeding practices may work differently for different children, based on their psychological traits. We also know that most parental feeding practices are used during mealtimes, which is also where most young children receive their vegetables. However, no studies appreciate the dynamic nature of these factors, the fact that parental feeding practices, and children's response to vegetables are transient states - even during the course of just a mealtime! Therefore, we created Feed Quest - a virtual mealtime experience where parents can use different feeding practices during mealtimes and the child avatars subsequent response to eating vegetables is aligned their level of food fussiness and emotionality. Feed Quest is designed to be beneficial to both researchers and parents. As researchers, we can see what strategies parents use, and how these change (or not) following a child's unfavourable response to vegetables. And parents playing the game can witness (in a safe, low-stress, virtual environment) the effects of different feeding strategies on the likelihood of their child happily eating their broccoli! A multidisciplinary team of Public Health Nutritionists, Psychologists, and Computer Scientists, have developed FeedQuest. You can find out more about the creators here.