ArticleFrontiers in nutrition2026
Psychological barriers in future food gatekeepers: How germ aversion and perceived infectability mediate nutrition-related food neophobia among pre-service preschool teachers.
Article in Frontiers in nutrition, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: The development of nutritional health literacy in early childhood is structurally influenced by adult food gatekeepers. Approached as a sociological study of food, this research investigates the relationship between Nutrition-Related Food Neophobia (NRFN) and Food Disgust (FD) among pre-service preschool teachers, examining the mediating roles of the Behavioral Immune System-specifically Perceived Infectability (PI) and Germ Aversion (GA)-as underlying behavioral determinants. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 548 pre-service preschool teachers (males 43.2%, females 56.8%) in Changsha, China. Participants completed validated scales including the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Questionnaire, the Nutrition-Related Food Neophobia Scale, and the Food Disgust Scale, evaluating biofortified rice as a nutritional stimulus. Data were analyzed using a two-step Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. Results: SEM analysis revealed that NRFN was significantly and positively associated with FD. PI and GA collectively mediated this relationship, explaining 54.69% of the total effect. The mediating influence of GA (30.98%) was numerically larger than that of PI (23.71%), indicating that the hygiene training of future educators may inadvertently contribute to their affective, evolutionary resistance to novel nutritional foods over their cognitive immune assessments. Conclusion: Despite the formal health and nutritional training anticipated in pre-service educators, our findings suggest that evolutionary pathogen-avoidance mechanisms continue to be strongly associated with their food aversion. These psychological barriers can potentially limit the implementation fidelity of nutritional educational tools within the kindergarten's social space of food. Enhancing children's dietary diversity and health literacy could benefit from shifting preventive strategies upstream, integrating food sociology and evolutionary psychology into teacher-training programs to dismantle germ aversion and build psychological resilience.
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