Is your child’s diet fat-proof?
What parents make available for their children to eat can contribute to an obesity-prone home food environment, according to researchers at Kansas State University. The researchers say that when it comes to childhood obesity, a multitude of factors affect the food children consume in the home.
“Many people view healthful eating and physical activity as an individual responsibility, but research says that we tend to eat what is available,” says David Dzewaltowski, professor and head of the department of kinesiology at K-State. “So, for adults, we are driven by what is available and marketed by the food system. For children, parents are the gatekeepers of what is available at home and what out-of-home options are provided.”
However, one big issue – especially in the current economy – is what parents can afford. The researchers concede that food prices can ultimately determine what a child eats. Healthy options such as fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats are generally more expensive than energy-dense foods made from refined grains, sugars and fats. When times are hard, an item’s price and taste may take precedence over its nutritional quality.
Even so, Dzewaltowski says parents and guardians should strive to set limits. “The best way to do this is to limit children’s options to healthful choices.” Think about how you’re serving food too – the researchers found that larger plates, bowls, cups and serving utensils can promote a greater consumption of food. And as we all should know by now, frying or deep frying in oil ups the fat content.
Rosenkranz says the healthy choice is not always the easy choice. “There are very powerful forces at work beyond the home that can have an overwhelming influence on what a parent does to provide things for children,” he explains. He points to several factors that can lead to an obesity-inducing environment: advertising directed at children that promotes unhealthy foods; the US farm bill that partly determines what foods are produced and the costs of those foods to a family; and the current economic situation that affects, among a list of numerous things, what foods families can afford.
But he adds that there are some simple changes you can make in your home to help prevent your child from being overweight, such as having regular family meals with fruits and vegetables and no soda, while saving junk foods for occasions like trips to the movies or restaurants. In addition, parents should make healthy options like fruits and vegetables easily accessible – for example, by having vegetables ready prepared for snacking, and a fruit bowl.
Parents also can be role models for their children and influence their attitudes about food and nutrition. “The worst thing a parent can do is to have and eat a lot of junk food – like ice cream, cookies and soda – in the home, and then to have restrictive practices with regard to allowing kids to access that junk food,” Rosenkranz says. “If the kids know it is there, and parents are consuming it themselves but won't let kids have it, that is just a recipe for disaster.”
The study appears in the March 2008 issue of the journal
Nutrition Reviews.