Purpose To describe physical activity (PA) levels by race/ethnicity, age, gender, and weight status in a representative sample of U.S. youth. Methods Cross-sectional data from the 2003–4 and 2005–6 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were combined and analyzed. Youth ages 6 to 19 with at least 4 10-hour days of PA measured by accelerometry were included (N=3,106). Outcomes included mean counts per minute and minutes spent in moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA). Results 6 to 11 year olds spent more time (88 min/day) in MVPA than 12 to 15 (33 min/day) and 16–19 (26 min/day) year olds (p<.001 for both). Females spent fewer min/day in MVPA than males (p<.001). Overall, obese youth spent 16 fewer min/day in MVPA than normal weight youth. However, non-Hispanic White (NHW) males spent 3–4 fewer min/day in vigorous PA than Mexican American (MA) (p=.004) and non-Hispanic Black (NHB) (p<.001) males but had lower obesity rates; and obese 12 to 15 year old MA recorded similar minutes in MVPA per day as normal weight MA (p>.050). There was a significant 3-way age-BMI-race/ethnicity interaction for mean min/day in MVPA (p<.001). Adjustment for total energy intake did not qualitatively alter these results. Conclusion Females and older youth were the least active groups. Obese youth were generally less active, but this did not hold uniformly across race/ethnic groups. Cultural or biological factors could moderate the association between PA and obesity in youth.

Interrupting sedentary time with brief moderate-intensity walking improved short-term metabolic function in non-overweight children without increasing subsequent energy intake. These findings suggest that interrupting sedentary behavior may be a promising prevention strategy for reducing cardiometabolic risk in children.

Parents exert a strong influence on their children's diet. While authoritative parenting style is linked to healthier weight and dietary outcomes in children, and authoritarian and permissive parenting styles with unhealthy eating, little is known about the mechanisms that mediate these relationships. Feeding styles are often examined in relation to child diet, but they do not consider the social and physical environmental contexts in which dietary behaviors occur. Therefore, this study examined whether parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) were associated with three specific food-related parenting practices - mealtime structural practices (e.g., eating meals as a family), parent modeling of healthy food, and household food rules and whether these parenting practices mediated the association between parenting styles and children's diet. Participants were 174 mother-child dyads. Mothers (68% married, 58% college graduates, M = 41 years [SD = 6.2]) reported on their parenting practices using validated scales and parenting style using the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. Children (52% female, M = 10 years [SD = 0.9]) completed two telephone-based 24-hour dietary recalls. Dietary outcomes included the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2010 score, and fruit and vegetables and added sugar intake. Using PROCESS, multiple mediation cross-sectional analyses with parallel mediators using 10,000 bootstraps were performed. Significant indirect effects were observed with mealtime structure and the relationships between authoritative parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = 0.045, p < .05, CI = [0.006, 0.126]), authoritarian parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.055, p < .05, CI = [-0.167, -0.001]), and permissive parenting and HEI-2010 score (b = -0.093, p < .05, CI = [-0.265, -0.008]). Child diet quality is affected by mealtime structural practices. Further examination of the features by which mealtime structural practices serve as a mechanism for parents to support healthy eating among their children may improve children's diet quality.

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