New insights into the ontogeny of human vegetable consumption: From developmental brain and cognitive changes to behavior

•There is research gap regarding how mental growth and brain maturation may impact on vegetable consumption.•We have identified particular brain maturation and mental growth patterns that may affect child vegetable consumption.•Both of these developmental patterns partially match with the Piagetian theory of development.•We have identified a series of potential modulating factors.•The 3–4 and 4−5 age ranges might potential sensitive periods for acquisition of brand knowledge of foods and health-related abstract concepts. Relatively little is known about how mental development during childhood parallels brain maturation, and how these processes may have an impact on changes in eating behavior: in particular in vegetable consumption. This review aims to bridge this research gap by integrating both recent findings from the study on brain maturation with recent results from research on cognitive development. Developmental human neuroscientific research in the field of the sensory systems and on the relationship between children’s cognitive development and vegetable consumption serve as benchmarks. We have identified brain maturation and mental growth patterns that may affect child vegetable consumption and conclude that both of these developmental patterns partially match with the Piagetian theory of development. Additionally, we conclude that a series of potential modulating factors, such as learning-related experiences, may lead to fluctuations in the course of those particular developmental patterns, and thus vegetable consumption patterns. Therefore, we propose a theoretical predictive model of child vegetable consumption in which the nature of the relationship between its correlational and/or causal components should be studied in the future by adopting an integral research perspective of the three targeted study levels: brain, cognition and behavior.