Are Parents’ Food Skills Linked to Healthier Eating in Children?

Are Parents’ Food Skills Linked to Healthier Eating in Children?

This study examined whether mothers’ and fathers’ food skills are linked to how healthy their children’s diets are.

What We Did and Why We Did It

Researchers studied 201 preschool-aged children and their parents (154 mothers and 100 fathers) in the Guelph Family Health Study. Parents answered questions about two types of food skills:

  • Planning and knowledge-based skills, such as planning meals and knowing how to use ingredients
  • Hands-on skills, such as the techniques of preparing and cooking food

Children’s diet quality was scored using the Healthy Eating Index, a measure of how well their diets matched healthy eating recommendations. Parents play a big role in shaping what their children eat, so researchers wanted to know whether mothers’ and fathers’ food skills were linked to the quality of their children’s diets, and whether each parent contributed in different ways.

 

What We Found

What We Can Learn From This

Mothers and fathers contributed in different ways:

  • Mothers scored higher than fathers on planning and knowledge-based food skills, while fathers scored higher on hands-on cooking skills.
  • Children whose mothers had stronger planning and knowledge-based food skills tended to have healthier diets.
  • Fathers’ food skills were not linked to children’s diet quality in this study.

This suggests that a parent’s ability to plan meals and use ingredients well may matter just as much as hands-on cooking when it comes to children’s diets. Programs that help parents build these planning and knowledge skills could be a useful way to support healthier eating in families.

Limitations

This was a snapshot taken at one point in time, so it cannot show cause and effect. Most participating families were White and from higher-income households, so the findings may not apply to all families.

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