BACKGROUND: Early food experiences shape children's eating behavior. Whether initiating complementary feeding (CF) with sweet-tasting foods impacts the taste of later dietary patterns remains unknown. This study combined a quantitative taste intensity database with dietary assessment methods to investigate this. OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether initiating CF in infants with sweet versus neutral-tasting foods leads to different dietary taste patterns at 12 to 36 months. METHODS: 246 Dutch infants (age 20.2 ± 1.8 weeks, 129 girls) participated in a RCT
they received either sweet-tasting (n=125) or neutral-tasting (n=121) fruit and vegetable purees during the first 15 days of initial complementary feeding. Dietary intake was assessed at 12, 18, 24, and 36 months using three 24-hour recalls. Reported foods (n=1,277) were grouped into five clusters - 'sour-sweet', 'sweet-fatty', 'fatty-salty', 'fatty', and 'neutral' tasting foods - based on their taste intensity values using K-means clustering. Dietary taste patterns were calculated as the average daily intake of energy (%kcal) and weight (%grams) from each taste cluster and compared between intervention groups. RESULTS: Overall, children's energy intake from neutral-tasting foods decreased from 61% ± 11% at 12 months to 44% ± 12% at 36 months (p <
0.001). Weight intake from neutral foods also declined (from 74% ± 9% to 62% ± 13%, p <
0.001). Conversely, children's energy intake from sweet-fatty, fatty-salty, and fatty foods increased significantly over the study period (from 12% ± 7% to 21% ± 10%, from 8% ± 6% to 13% ± 7%, and from 7% ± 5% to 11% ± 6% respectively, all p≤0.01). No differences were observed between the two intervention groups. CONCLUSION: Overall, children's diets became more diverse and intense in taste but exposure to sweet taste during early CF did not influence the dietary taste patterns in later childhood. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRY: clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03348176).