Parents’ eating habits can influence their children’s responses to food, say experts

New research indicates that children adopt eating behaviours they see from their parents, from comfort eating to healthy habits. 

It's amazing what children pick up from the adults in their lives, from unusual traits passed on by their parents, to even inheriting grandparent's trauma. Among the habits and behaviours picked up by children, their parent's eating behaviour has an influence on how they children respond to food, according to new research .  

A team at Aston University led by Professor Jacqueline Blissett in the School of Psychology and Aston Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment (IHN), found that young children tend to display similar behaviour around food as their parents, while a parent’s eating style can influence how they feed their children. 

Researchers asked parents to rate their own eating behaviour, before looking for associations between their behaviours and those of their children. Parents were grouped into four main eating styles:

Typical eaters: No extreme behaviours.

Avid eaters: High food approach traits such as eating in response to food cues in the environment and their emotions, rather than hunger signals.

Emotional eaters: Eat in response to emotion but don’t enjoy food as much as avid eaters.

Avoidant eaters: Selective about food and don’t really enjoy eating. 

When parents had avid or avoidant eating behaviours, their children were particularly likely to mimic them. Parents with avid or emotional eating styles themselves were more likely to use food to comfort or soothe their own children, who would then go on to display similar traits. However, when parents with these styles offered their children a balanced, varied range of foods, their children were less likely to display the same behaviour as their parents. 

Dr Abigail Pickard, the lead researcher on the project, said: "Parents are a key influence in children’s eating behaviour but equally, parents have the perfect opportunity to encourage a balanced diet and healthy eating from a young age in their children.

“Therefore, it is important to establish how a parent’s eating style is associated with their children’s eating style and what factors could be modified to encourage healthy relationships with food.”

Following on from the study, Dr Pickard and the team intend to develop an intervention to support parents to use other ways to regulate emotions, model healthy eating, and create a healthy food environment in the home. Doing so could help stop less desirable eating behaviours from being passed down from parent to child. 

In other news, one expert has said that you have to be ok with letting your kids leave food on their plates, while here’s what you can do to encourage your child to eat more vegetables. Why not also brush up on what counts as a portion of fruit and vegetables, or check out the healthiest fast food for when you do want to treat the family?