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Parental control over feeding and children’s fruit and vegetable intake: How are they related?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2004.11.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Objectives

To replicate the finding of a negative association between parental control and fruit and vegetable consumption in girls. To extend the investigation to boys and examine sex differences. To test the hypothesis that children’s food neophobia explains this association.

Design

Cross-sectional questionnaire survey.

Measures

The questionnaire included items assessing parents’ and children’s fruit and vegetable intake, the Parental Control Index, and the Child Food Neophobia Scale.

Subjects

Parents of 564 2- to 6-year-old children, recruited from 22 London nursery schools.

Statistical analysis

Relationships between continuous variables were examined with Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. Sex differences were tested using independent sample t tests, and sex differences in correlations were assessed from their 95% confidence intervals. Parental control and children’s food neophobia were entered into a hierarchical multiple regression to test the hypothesis that neophobia explains the association between parental control and children’s fruit and vegetable intake.

Results

We replicated the finding that parental control was correlated with children’s fruit and vegetable consumption and found no significant sex differences. Parental fruit and vegetable consumption and children’s food neophobia were also strong predictors of children’s fruit and vegetable consumption, and both were associated with parental control, suggesting that they might explain the association between control and intake. Controlling for children’s food neophobia and parental intake reduced the association of parental control with children’s fruit and vegetable intake to nonsignificance.

Conclusions

These findings emphasize the importance of systematic research about associations between parental feeding styles and children’s dietary habits so that dietetics professionals can give parents sound advice.

Section snippets

Procedure

Twenty-two nursery schools in London, UK, with a total of 896 pupils in the age range 2 to 6 years, were invited to participate in a study of children’s food preferences. The survey was publicized with posters displayed in the nurseries. Questionnaires were left for staff to distribute to parents, together with a postage-paid return envelope. Anonymity for participants was ensured by numbering questionnaires and linking these numbers to parents’ names in a separately stored file.

Demographic characteristics

Respondents

Response rates and sample characteristics

Nine hundred questionnaires were given out to nursery schools, of which 572 were returned (64%). Data from eight respondents were excluded because their children failed to meet the age criteria for the study, leaving a final sample size of 564. Parental respondents were between age 21 and 59 years, with a mean of 36 years (standard deviation=5). Three hundred eighty-six respondents (68%) reported their ethnicity as white European, 105 (19%) as other, and 73 (13%) declined to answer. Five

Discussion

The results of the present study replicate, in a substantially different sample and setting, the negative association between parental control and children’s fruit and vegetable consumption previously reported in American girls (9). It is not possible to compare absolute effect sizes because the two studies used different measures of control and fruit and vegetable consumption. However, the (unadjusted) correlation between parental control and fruit and vegetable consumption in this sample was

Conclusions

The emergence of neophobia as an important predictor of low fruit and vegetable intake in children may reduce some of the blame typically apportioned to parents. Nevertheless, the strong parent-child similarities in fruit and vegetable consumption observed here and elsewhere emphasize the importance of parents’ own intake in overcoming this natural predisposition. Future interventions aimed at increasing children’s intake of fruits and vegetables would be well advised to target parents’ eating

J. Wardle is director, S. Carnell is a research psychologist, and L. Cooke is a research psychologist, Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, England.

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    J. Wardle is director, S. Carnell is a research psychologist, and L. Cooke is a research psychologist, Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, England.

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