Table 3 What this review adds

1.Potential determinants for children's fruit and vegetable intake:

- Time costs: trade-off between time and being healthy

- Satiating power: fruit and vegetables are perceived as less filling than fast food

- Situational norms: perceptions of appropriateness of time, occasions and settings for eating fruit

and vegetables

- Important aspects of availability: variety, visibility, methods of preparation, quality of fruit and

vegetables, access to unhealthy food

- Other important sensory aspects than taste: appearance, smell, texture

- Price and inconsistency in taste of fruit and vegetables in comparison with unhealthy food

- Peer influences: sharing food as a means of socialising, the symbolic value of food for image and gender

identity

- School availability: the importance of variety and being able to make your own food choice,

too short breaks for eating fruit and vegetables

- Short term outcome expectancies more important than long term outcome expectations:

Children see long term outcomes as a distant concern of adulthood, they value the immediate benefits or

drawbacks of eating fruit and vegetables

2.Extensive information about potential determinants that have only been sparsely investigated in quantitative studies e.g. peer influence, school availability and thereby new input for conceptualisation and operationalisation of these factors

3.Potential mechanisms behind the observed epidemiological associations (or lack of) between personal, social and environmental factors and children's fruit and vegetable intake such as gender and SEP differences e.g. children from high SEP families are exposed to a larger variety of fruit and vegetables at home and thereby may develop a higher preference for a variety of fruit and vegetables which increases their consumption

4.Potential reasons for children's higher intake of fruit compared to vegetables e.g. they perceive fewer time points, occasions and settings as appropriate for eating vegetables than fruit

5.Awareness about the shortage of qualitative studies within this research area from other countries than US