Home food availability, parents’/caregivers’ support, and family meals influence on dietary servings of low-income urban adolescent girls from Brazil

Abstract

Background: There is a striking lack of evidence about parents'/caregivers' influence on their children's dietary intake across Brazil and other middle-and low-income countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the associations between adolescents' dietary intake and home environment, family meals and parental support. Methods: Cross-sectional study with 14-18 years old adolescent girls was conducted in 10 public schools in the city of São Paulo. Girls' dietary intake, home food environment, parental support, and family meals' frequency were selfreported by 253 adolescents. Brazilian Food Pyramid recommendation was used as reference for the dietary intake. Linear regressions were used to verify the associations between home environmental, parental support, and family meal frequency with dietary intake. Results: Girls parents' support for healthy eating was positively associated with the fruits group (mean (95%CI) 0.75 (0.66 to 0.84) ß = 0.26, p = 0.003), and the vegetables group (3.40 (3.08 to 3.72, ß = 0.25, p = 0.006) and negatively associated with the meat and eggs group (2.09 (1.93 to 2.25), ß = −0.14, p = 0.041). Home environment was associated with fruits group (0.73 (0.63 to 0.82), ß = 0.35, p = 0.001). The associations between sharing family meals and food groups were not statistically significant. However, girls demonstrated a positive association with dietary intake and sharing family meals. Conclusion: Parental support and home food environment were associated with dietary intake of the adolescent girls. Future studies-mainly from low-and middle-income countries -are needed to provide additional evidence on these associations and the effects of youth home environment.

When Eating Intuitively Is Not Always a Positive Response: Using Machine Learning to Better Unravel Eaters Profiles

“…However, preventive health education interventions could be implemented to impede eating disorders and partial eating disorders before they ever occur. The recent fourth generation of primary prevention programs on dysfunctional eating attitudes and behaviors advocates the importance of a “blind target” and integrates physical and mental health, simultaneously (targeting both obesity and dysfunctional eating attitudes and behaviors) to avoid conflicting messages from obesity-only and eating disorders-only programs, or the risk of being fascinated by alarmist message about complications of eating disorders [ 76 , 82 , 83 , 84 ]. In addition,, these programs should focus on protective factors, such as positive physical self-perceptions, in an ecological environment [ 83 , 85 , 86 ].…”