Objectives This study examined the association between the dietary behavior and weight status of preschool children and their mothers in Daejeon, Korea.
Methods: A total of 301 mother–preschool children (aged 3~6 years) dyads were included in this study. The dietary behavior of children and their mothers was assessed using the Nutrition Quotient (NQ) questionnaire for preschoolers and adults, respectively. The NQ questionnaires were completed by the mothers. The overweight/ obesity status of children and their mothers was determined using data on height and body weight reported by the mothers. Multiple logistic regression was performed to examine the relationship between the dietary behavior and weight status of children and their mothers.
Results: The mean NQ score was 58.9 ± 9.7 in children and 55.6 ± 9.2 in mothers. The NQ score was higher in boys than girls but did not vary by age. The prevalence of overweight/obesity was 27.5% in children and 46.5% in mothers. The physical activity level of mothers and their NQ scores were positively associated with the NQ scores of the children. After adjustment for covariates, the mothers in the highest tertile of NQ scores showed a lower odds ratio (OR) for the unhealthy dietary behavior of children (OR = 0.24, 95% CI = 0.11~0.53, P< 0.001) compared to those in the lowest tertile.
The obese mothers showed a higher OR for children’s overweight/obesity (OR = 3.38, 95% CI = 1.68~6.80, P = 0.001) compared to normal weight mothers.
Conclusions: The dietary behavior and weight status of young children and their mothers were closely linked. Nutrition education programs targeting mothers are necessary for improving maternal and child nutrition. Specifically, these programs need to be tailored to the socioeconomic characteristics or weight status of mothers.
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In an attempt to investigate mothers' perceptions of factors affecting preschool children's food preferences, their policy improving food intake and belief in food selection, in-depth interviews with 30 mothers who had preschool children were conducted in Daegu and Busan. The interviews were tape-recorded and the contents of interviews were analysed by researchers. Most mothers and children liked meats. It was found that children usually disliked vegetables such as onions, carrots, and green onions. Mothers perceived that many factors affected their children's food preferences: mothers' and fathers' food preferences, food offering at meals, mothers' food intake during pregnancy, children's food intake during weaning period, heredity, peer pressure, and advertisements on television. Mothers made efforts to improve childrens food intakes in many ways: change of cooking method, emphasizing function of nutrients and food for health, conciliation and enforcement, and comparison to other children. The most affecting belief for mothers in food selection was family members' food preference. Health, balance in nutrient intake, degree of food processes, food additives, chemicals, convenience, diversity, and economy were also important beliefs to select food. Convenience was especially the primary belief in choosing and preparing children's snacks. Mothers offered frozen dumplings and meat, instant noodles, tuna, and ham for snacks for convenience. These results showed that mothers understood many aspects affecting children's food preference, tried to improve children's food intakes, and had several beliefs in food selection. We concluded that it is necessary to give information for mothers to make healthy snacks in a short time and chance to learn cooking skills.
This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of mothers' attitudes on preparing baby foods for their children's food habits and development. The subjects were allocated to 419 preschool children, aged 3 - 5 years. This study surveyed by questionnaire, which was answered by the children's mothers. Subjects were classified by two groups, active and passive, based on their mothers' weaning attitudes. In the active group, mothers tried to make a variety of foods for preparing the baby foods, whereas mothers in the passive group didn't try to make it too much. Family income was higher in the active group and the subjects' mothers had more jobs than those in the passive group, whereas their parent's education levels showed no differences. According to Rohrer index, 2.6% of subjects were obese in the active group, whereas 7.7% in the passive group. These data were shown significantly different between the groups. There were no differences in mother's food habits and breast-feeding versus formula feeding between the two groups. However, children's food habits were shown statistically different between the two groups. Higher regularity of meals, higher frequencies of snacks at home, higher frequencies of fruit, corn, sweet potato as a snacks and less instant foods were revealed in the active group more than in the passive group. The major problem of children's food habits was an unbalanced diet (52.7%) and the major reasons for unbalanced diet were the taste (58.7%) and the texture (23.2%). The active group used more fruits and vegetables than the passive group. Also there were significant differences to solve problems of children's unbalanced diets. In the positive group, 14.4% of mothers tried to develop new cooking methods for solving the problem of an unbalanced diet, but 8.2% did in the passive group. Furthermore, 2.3% of mothers in the positive group removed unpleasant items of the food, whereas 6.9% did in the passive. The average nutritional knowledge scores on a 10 scale were 7.2 and 6.9 in active and passive groups, respectively, and they were statistically different. Mothers among the active group explained the knowledge for food and nutrition to their children more than those in the passive group. These results suggest that mothers' attitudes for baby food are an important factor for forming their children's food habits. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a nutritional education program, materials and new recipes for a variety of baby foods to mothers.