Knowing Is Not Eating: Child-Reported Food Perception Versus Actual Dietary Intake in Southern Peru

Background/Objectives: Understanding whether children’s perceptions of food, that is, what a child recognizes as healthy, are associated with their actual consumption is key to designing effective nutritional interventions, but this has rarely been directly tested in the children themselves. This study aimed to determine whether children’s food perceptions are associated with their actual recent intake.

Methods

As secondary objectives, the cultural salience of foods perceived as healthy and unhealthy was characterized in 129 schoolchildren (52 girls, 77 boys; ages 8–12) at a school in Moquegua, southern Peru, using an open-ended listing task (five healthy foods and five unhealthy foods) and Smith’s salience index, and this perception was compared with their reported intake from a 24-h recall (breakfast and lunch; n = 128), classified according to NOVA criteria and the Peruvian Dietary Guidelines.