Mexican American mothers' food-related parenting practices

Nutrition Research Newsletter, Dec, 2006

Almost 40% of Mexican American children ages 6 to 11 years are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight, compared to 36% of non-Hispanic black and 26% of non-Hispanic white children. Because Mexican Americans are one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States, research is needed to understand the causes of obesity in Mexican American children to help design effective obesity prevention programs.

Parents' feeding strategies and eating practices influence children's dietary intake in ways that may not always be intended. However, most of the research in this area has been conducted with white families. Therefore. a recent study examined the relationship between mothers' reports of food-related parenting and children's dietary intake and BMI in Mexican American families.

Data were collected between September 1999 and June 2000 from 108 Mexican families of fifth-grade students enrolled in eight elementary schools, which were involved in an obesity prevention trial. Children's height, weight, and three 24 h dietary recalls were collected. Food security was measured using the 18 item US Department of Agriculture Core Food Security Module. Food-related parenting attitudes were measured by subscales from the Child Feeding Questionnaire.

Mothers' pressure on their children to eat was inversely correlated with children's BMI. In food-insecure families, attitudes toward making healthful foods available were inversely associated with children' daily energy intake and BMI. In contrast, in food-secure families attitudes about making healthful foods available were positively associated with children's fruit intake and percentage energy from fat. Also, parental modeling of healthful food behaviors was inversely associated with the energy density. Pressure to eat was positively associated with vegetable consumption in food-secure households, but not in food-insecure households.

The results show that the level of food security may mediate the associations between food-related parenting attitudes and children's food intake. In addition, the research showed that in Mexican American families, mothers' food-related parenting attitudes were associated with their children's weight and dietary intake. Specifically, thinner children were pressured to eat more than were heavier children although on average children in the sample were not underweight. Therefore, the long-term effects of excessive parental pressure on children's eating should be monitored and examined in intervention research.

Donna A. Matheson, Thomas N. Robinson, Ann Varady, et al. Do Mexican American Mothers' Food-Related Parenting Practices Influence Their Children's Weight and Dietary Intake? JADA; 106(11): 1861-1865 (November 2006). [Correspondence: Donna M. Matheson, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, Stanford Prevention Research Center, 211 Quarry Road, Room 229, Stanford, CA 94305-5705. E-mail: Matheson@stanford.edu.]