Secondly, we determined children's liking for sweet foods in daily life. Because children often answer in the affirmative, we developed a forced-choice procedure to query children directly about their food likes/choices (see [5]). In brief, children were presented with pictures of two side-by-side, identical figures with neutral facial expressions and were told that the children in the picture look the same but like different things. Five pairs of food items were then recited, and the child was told that one of the figures liked one of the pair, whereas the other figure liked the other. The child was then asked to point to the figure in the picture that was most like her/him. The pairs, recited in counterbalanced order, included different food items, with one item considered to have a sweet taste and the other a salty/savory taste (ice cream versus potato chips, cookies versus pretzels, pancakes versus bacon, candy versus Doritos, dessert versus salty snack). Children were also asked whether they liked to add sugar to their cereal. From these data, a sweet food liking score was calculated (range: 0–6; higher numbers reflect greater sweet food liking). Children also named their favorite candy.
