Are Sugar-Reduced and Whole Grain Infant Cereals Sensorially Accepted at Weaning? A Randomized Controlled Cross-Over Trial Sánchez Siles, Luis Manuel Bernal, María José Plaza Díaz, Julio Gil Hernández, Ángel Cereals Complementary feeding Gastrointestinal tolerance Infancy Infant cereals Sensory acceptability Sugar Sustainable foods Weaning Whole grains We are immensely grateful to the primary care pediatricians, Enrique López, Francisco Carrillo, Begoña Pelegrín, Eva María Rodriguez, Matilde Zornoza, María Fuensanta Costa, Antonio Iofrío, Sebastian Lorente, Santiago Carbajo and Gregorio Vicente who actively collaborated in recruiting and monitoring the infants. We would like to acknowledge the support of Isabel Vasallo for the trial monitoring, David Prieto for helping us with the statistical analyses, Fabien Gandolphe for the unconditional support to make this project possible and Romy Jacobs for working on this study during her internship. Lastly, we would like to thank all parents and children who participated in this study. The way infants are fed during the complementary period can have a significant impact on infants’ health and development. Infant cereals play an important role in complementary feeding in many countries. In spite of well documented benefits of a low sugar and high whole grain diet, commercial infant cereals are often refined and contain a high amount of sugars. The aim of the present study was to compare the sensory acceptability, gastrointestinal tolerance and bowel habits of two commercially available infant cereals in Spain with varying sugar and whole grain contents in infants at weaning. Forty-six healthy infants (mean age = 5.2 ± 0.4 months) received one of the two infant cereals containing either 0% whole grain flour and a high sugar content produced by starch hydrolysis (24 g/100 g) (Cereal A) or 50% whole grain flour and a medium-sugar content produced by hydrolysis (12 g/100 g) (Cereal B) in a randomized, triple blind, cross-over controlled trial. Both types of infant cereals were consumed for seven weeks. The cross-over was carried out after seven weeks. Sensory acceptability, anthropometry, gastrointestinal tolerance and adverse events were measured, and results evaluated using a linear regression model. No significant differences were observed between groups in any of the main variables analyzed. Importantly, the long-term health implications of our findings represent a wake-up call for the food industry to reduce or even eliminate simple sugars in infant cereals and for regulatory bodies and professional organizations to recommend whole grain infant cereals. 2020-09-08T11:23:55Z 2020-09-08T11:23:55Z 2020-06-24 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Sanchez-Siles, L. M., Bernal, M. J., Gil, D., Bodenstab, S., Haro-Vicente, J. F., Klerks, M., ... & Gil, Á. (2020). Are Sugar-Reduced and Whole Grain Infant Cereals Sensorially Accepted at Weaning? A Randomized Controlled Cross-Over Trial. Nutrients, 12(6). [doi:10.3390/nu12061883] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/63334 10.3390/nu12061883 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI