How Parents affect Children’s Food Choices

Parents have a significant impact on their children’s eating habits because they provide both genes and an environment for them. For example, they influence children’s developing preferences and eating behaviors by making certain foods available and by acting as models of good eating behavior.

If we want children to like and eat healthy foods like vegetables, we need to provide them with early, positive, and repeated experiences with those foods, as well as opportunities, to observe others eating those foods.

The natural preference of children for sweet or salty, caloric-rich foods over energy-poor but micronutrient-rich alternatives emphasizes the importance of parent intervention in providing a varied and highly nutritious diet.

Parents play a critical role in determining which foods their children will become familiar with – from foods kept routinely in the pantry to those served regularly at the family table and even those consumed away from home. Parents also perform an important job in guarding the social influences that influence children’s eating, such as media exposure and modeling.

Observing other people’s eating habits influences children’s acceptance of foods, decisions about how frequently families eat together, who is present during family meals, and what is served will influence what is consumed and what children will learn to like and eat.

Evidence of the poor nutritional quality of table foods consumed by infants and toddlers as they transition to the adult diet demonstrates the importance of parental guidance regarding the importance of offering healthy foods, avoiding restrictive feeding practices, and serving as positive models of eating behavior for their infants and young children. (ND II Bea Margaux E. Cornelia, RND)