Studies on the Dietary Habits of Preschool Children : Effects of Dietary Habits and Parent\u27s Awareness of Dietary Life on the Vegetable Intake of Preschool Children

We examined the relationship between the dietary consciousness of parents, and the eating habits, including the vegetables eaten of children, by questioning 270 parents of children at kindergarten, for the purpose of obtaining data on the promotion of desirable diets for preschool children. The results are as follows:1) Regarding the dietary consciousness of parents, the parents thought that “eating is a basic aspect of life<, and “nourishment balance<, “eating manners<, and so on, are highly valued. On the other hand, the awareness ratio of “chewing power< was lowly valued.2) The results of the evaluation of children\u27s eating habits expressed in the scores showed that the diets of approximately half of the preschool children were “bad<.3) The awareness ratio of the bad eating habit group was significantly low in “do not give too many sweets<, “chewing power<, “nourishment balance<, “bias of tastes<, “eating volume<, “contents eaten between meals<, <eating time and frequency of eating< in the items of awareness of eating habit formation.4) The awareness ratio of the group who did not eat green and yellow vegetables every day was significantly low in the same items as those of the bad eating habit group.5) The frequency of eating each kind of food was significantly high in the group whose frequency of eating green and yellow vegetables was high.6) 73.3% disliked vegetables. The reason for this dislike was taste, smell, appearance, texture, and so on.7) Regarding measures to deal with unbalanced diets, most of the parents were making efforts to change cooking methods, to make children eat in small amounts, among other things.From these results, it was recognized that the dietary consciousness of the parents had an effect on the eating habits of the children. We consider that it is important for parents to become interested in food and health, and make an effort to enhance their awareness so that food education can be given to children at home. The results indicated that food education for parents was important for that purpose