Maternal attitudes, beliefs and practices related to the feeding and nutritional status of schoolchildren

Abstract

Objective To analyze the relationship between the maternal attitudes, beliefs and practices and the children’s food consumption and nutritional status. Methods A cross-sectional study of 563 mother-child pairs. Mothers answered an online questionnaire that collected the following information: sociodemographic data, maternal nutritional status, the child’s food consumption (evaluated through the Food Frequency Questionnaire and the School Child Diet Index), and maternal attitudes, beliefs and practices about the schoolchildren’s eating (assessed through the Child Feeding Questionnaire). Children had their anthropometric measurements evaluated for the interpretation of the nutritional status. Results Mothers who considered their children to be bigger (ORaj=6.60) and who worried more about their children’s weight (ORaj=3.47) presented greater chances of having overweight children. Mothers with a greater perception of responsibility (ORaj=0.57) and who put more pressure in their children to eat (ORaj=0.38) presented lower chances of having overweight children. The majority of children consumed high-quality food (77.4%). Mothers who more closely monitored their children’s food consumption were 2.79 times more likely to have their children eating high-quality food. Conclusion Nutritional interventions should focus on stimulating the parents’ sense of responsibility for the child’s nutrition, as well as on promoting the frequent monitoring of the child’s food intake.

Family influence on the nutritional status and eating habits of six to nine year-old children

“…It was evident that when restricting the consumption of certain foods, caregivers took into account the weight of their child. The highest mean of restriction practices was detected among caregivers responsible Children Caregivers for children with severe obesity, followed by those caring for obese and overweight children [3,30,46]. This is consistent with the literature identifying this practice as a caregiver's first choice to control overweight children's consumption of unhealthy foods [3,9].…”

“…This is consistent with the literature identifying this practice as a caregiver's first choice to control overweight children's consumption of unhealthy foods [3,9]. However, this practice is classified as dangerous in the long term because the child bases the choice and quantity of food on parental rules and not on knowledge about nutrition or indicators of hunger and satiety [9,30,46].…”

“…The mean scores of the monitoring factor did not significantly differ among caregivers of children with different nutritional status, a pattern was noted: caregivers responsible for normal weight children had the highest score, followed by those responsible for overweight children. Lastly, caregivers who monitor less are those whose children are underweight, similar to other studies [30,45].…”

“…Lorenzato et al [34] pointed out that children's nutritional status is correlated with that of their caregivers, reinforcing the importance of the family environment in the development of children's eating habits and, consequently, in their nutritional status. Other studies have shown that, in addition to genetic factors, many factors in the family environment can directly interfere with children's eating behavior, especially strategies adopted by those responsible for feeding them [2,5,25,27,30].…”

“…Nutritional knowledge alone does not guarantee healthy eating habits because the actual behavior is dependent on food beliefs, taboos, and so on [25,27]. Children's eating behavior is most susceptible to external interference because they are not the ones purchasing and preparing the food they consume [11,17,[26][27][28][29], in addition to attitudes, control practices, and beliefs of family members in relation to their food that directly influence the construction of eating habits even in childhood [9,15,25,30,31].…”