The relationship between children's home food environment and dietary patterns in childhood and adolescence

Objective: To identify correlates of the home food environment (parents’ intake, availability and food related parenting practices) at age 10 with dietary patterns during childhood and in adolescence. Setting: Fifty-nine Flemish elementary schools. Design and subjects: Primary schoolchildren (10 years of age) completed a questionnaire at school and 4 years later by e-mail or mail. Their parents completed a questionnaire on food related parenting practices at baseline. Six hundred and nine matched questionnaires were included in the analyses. Statistics: Multilevel regression analyses were used to identify baseline parenting practices (pressure, reward, negotiation, catering on demand, permissiveness, verbal praise, avoiding negative modelling, availability healthy/unhealthy food items and mothers’ fruit and vegetable and excess scores) associated with children’s dietary patterns (fruit and vegetable score and excess score). Results: Mother’s fruit and vegetable score was a significant positive independent predictor for children’s fruit and vegetable score at baseline and follow up, whereas availability of unhealthy foods was significantly negative associated with both scores. Negotiation was positively associated with children’s follow up fruit and vegetable score, while permissiveness was positively associated with children’s follow up excess score. Availability of unhealthy foods and mother’s excess score were positively related with children’s excess score at baseline and follow up. Conclusion: Parental intake and restricting the availability of unhealthy foods appeared to have a consistent impact on children’s and adolescents’ diets, but also negotiating and less permissive food-related parenting practices may improve adolescents’ diets