Do Healthy Eating Habits Start at Home?

By Mark Bishop, Deputy Director

Conventional wisdom tells us that to change the eating habits of children, you need to get to the parents. (And I hope that's true, because I'm working hard with my kid.) We talk to people in schools and hear all the time that they can't get their students to try XXXX (fill in the blank here with your favorite veggie, lean meat, or soy-based vegan product) because the kids never had it at home. Schools can't change because they need parents to change first!

But a recent study is challenging this notion.

"Child-parent dietary resemblance in the U.S. is relatively weak, and varies by nutrients and food groups and by the types of parent-child dyads and social demographic characteristics such as age, gender and family income," said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition... "Our findings indicate that factors other than family and parental eating behaviors may play an important role in affecting American children’s dietary intakes."

While the study didn't identify all the factors, it did highlight what seemed to be important areas -- including community and school, food environment, peer influence and television viewing, as well as individual factors such as self-image and self-esteem.

Of course, this is not saying that parents do not affect their kids' nutritional choices, only that parents are among many influences on children's eating and their impact may not be as strong as many believe. Further, it says that "for interventions targeting parents, those would be more effective when targeted at mothers, minority groups, and as early as possible in childhood."

What I take away from this is that focusing in the school environment is as important as ever. Schools can play a major role in shaping children's eating habits, no matter what children are eating at home, watching on TV or talking about with their friends.

And as we know from our community partners, some of the best programs to promote healthy eating at school are those that involve parents as well as students. Our friends at Namaste Charter School, for example, invite parents to attend a weekly Friday breakfast [pdf] that includes tips on relevant health topics. Our own experience working as part of the Partnership to Reduce Disparities in Asthma and Obesity in Latino Schools showed us how powerful parent advocacy can be in bringing about healthy changes throughout entire communities.

We all -- schools included -- play a role in making sure children have healthy meals and are prepared to make healthy choices as they grow older.

Comments

[Rhonda Olsen]

Excellent article! It really is about educating everyone on the importance of healthful eating. That's great if the schools are participating. Afterall, if a child goes home and requests a nutritious snack, because that is what they learned at school, what parent is going to say no to that? Children will then have a positive influence on their parents eating habits as well and it's a win-win. :0)

[Jenny]

Kids often copy parent behavior and if we wish to see a healthy eating pattern in kids ,we must change our bad eating habits http://www.habitchanger.com/feedingyourkids/

[Doug Millington]

Getting the parental buy-in is key to kids to adapt healthy eating habits. I think some kids may make the right choice without parental buy-in but that number has to go up with the parents on board.

[mom in the suburbs]

we eat very healthy but with our child entering the public school system peer and teacher influence has raised its ugly head. sure he would rather eat pizza, given the opportunity, but is otherwise a really good eater, as they say. Other kids AND TEACHERS respond to his lunches with "what's that?" "gross!", etc...we are not "tofu granola" eaters...just lots of good leftovers from dinner so context is extremely important. think teachers are the worst...ever seen the teachers room? put a tray full of cookies in there and watch them vaporize.

[Steph Parkie]

Thank you for a wonderful sharing of your article about Eating Healthy. I am a parent too and I know that guiding my kids to eat properly can really affect them and they can learn more about healthy things to do inside or not in the house. :)

[Carol]

It starts at home but as you had said it should be a combined effort of the home and outside environment. But definitely we should start it at home as most of their time is spent at home.