Beyond Food Access: The Impact of Parent-, Home-, and Neighborhood-Level Factors on Children’s Diets

Abstract

Despite the growth in empirical research on neighborhood environmental characteristics and their influence on children’s diets, physical activity, and obesity, much remains to be learned, as few have examined the relationship between neighborhood food availability on dietary behavior in children, specifically. This analysis utilized data from a community-based, cross-sectional sample of children (n = 199) that was collected in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2010. This dataset was linked to food environment data to assess the impact of neighborhood food access as well as household and parent factors on children’s diets. We observed a negligible impact of the neighborhood food environment on children’s diets, except with respect to fast food, with children who had access to fast food within 500 m around their home significantly less likely (OR = 0.35, 95% CI: 0.1, 0.8) to consume vegetables. Key parental and household factors did play a role in diet, including receipt of public assistance and cooking meals at home. Children receiving public assistance were 2.5 times (95% CI: 1.1, 5.4) more likely to consume fruit more than twice per day compared with children not receiving public assistance. Children whose family cooked dinner at home more than 5 times per week had significantly more consumption of fruit (64% vs. 58%) and vegetables (55% vs. 39%), but less soda (27% vs. 43%). Findings highlight the need for future research that focuses on the dynamic and complex relationships between built and social factors in the communities and homes of children that impact their diet in order to develop multilevel prevention approaches that address childhood obesity.

Fruit and vegetable consumption among 3–5-year-old Finnish children and their parents: Is there an association?

“…At the same time, the association between shared family meals and children's fruit and vegetable consumption was weaker than expected. The result related to children is not in line with previous findings, where family meals have been associated with dietary quality and the fruit and vegetable intake of children (de Jong, Visscher, HiraSing, Seidell, & Renders, 2015;Futrell Dunaway et al, 2017). It could be that family meals do not set the demographic of under-school-aged children apart, as they nearly always eat with their parents anyway; the results might have been different…”

Barriers to healthy food access: Associations with household income and cooking behavior

“…These results underscore the importance of additional research on home cooking as a determinant of dietary intake and the need for greater understanding of the strategies that people use to navigate structural and environmental barriers to cooking (healthfully) at home. The present study illustrates that even at different income and barriers to healthy food access, and the interaction between the two, are associated with differences in cooking and eating behaviors that are important for diet quality and health outcomes (Mills et al, 2017; Wolfson, 2015; Futrell Dunaway et al, 2017; Adams and Mills, 2017).…”

The Forbidden Reward. The Emergence of Parent-Child Conflicts About Food Over Time and the Influence of Parents' Communication Strategies and Feeding Practices

“…Questions about nutrition can lead to some disagreements between family members ( 1 – 4 ), especially when children are involved ( 5 ). Most importantly, there is a great potential for the emergence of these conflicts, as children are constantly exposed to food-related cues ( 6 – 9 ).…”