14 DAY TRIAL // Contrary to what we might think, it would seem that parents have little influence on what their children eat, concluded a new study conducted by a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
They have made a review and evaluated the degree of association and resemblance between what children and their parents eat, according to data from worldwide studies published since 1980.
Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, MS, lead author of the study and an associate professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of International Health, worked with colleagues from the National Institute on Aging and the University of Zaragoza in Spain.
They focused on all relevant studies, which were published in different countries, between 1980 and 2009.
The available data allowed them to compare the correlations between parent-child pairs' dietary intakes, by type of parent-child pairs – mother-daughter vs. father-son, world regions and dietary assessment methods and also over time.
The discrepancies they found were in parent-child dietary intake resemblance, in terms of nutrients and dietary assessment approaches.
Another thing revealed by this meta-analysis was that the correlations got weaker over time, especially in the US, where parent-child correlations in intake of energy and total fat are very poor compared to non-European countries.
Wang said that “contrary to popular belief, many studies from different countries, including the United States, have found a weak association between parent-child dietary intake.
“This is likely because young people's eating patterns are influenced by many complex factors, and the family environment plays only a partial role.
“More attention should be given to the influence of the other players on children's eating patterns such as that of schools, the local food environment and peer influence, government guidelines and policies that regulate school meals, and the broader food environment that is influenced by food production, distribution and advertising.”
He added that parents need to take over the power over their children's eating habits, and become role models themselves, so that their kids could adopt a healthy diet.
May A. Beydoun, PhD, a co-author of the review, staff scientist at the National Institute on Aging, and a former postdoctoral fellow at the Bloomberg School, said that “findings of this study will help enhance our understanding of the factors that may affect children's dietary intake patterns and provide useful insights for developing effective intervention programs to promote healthy eating in young people.
“More research is needed to study the parent-child resemblance in the diet, the differences in the association between population groups, and the determinants.”
This meta-analysis appears in the December issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.