Comparison of Hispanic maternal and their early adolescent daughters\u27 eating patterns

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to compare the consumption of food groups by early adolescent Hispanic girls with overweight/obesity and their mothers including fruits, vegetables, dairy, sweets, sweetened beverages and fried foods. Data were collected from 108 mother-daughters dyads at baseline from different cohorts who participated in the BOUNCE Healthy Lifestyle program during the summers of 2009-2011 and 2013. In addition, this study examined the influence of acculturation level on mother and daughter’s food group consumption. Both mother and daughter participants completed questionnaires assessing demographic information, acculturation, food frequency and abdominal adiposity. A paired t-test was used to compare mother and daughter’s frequency of consumption of fruits, vegetables, dairy, sweets, sweetened beverages and fried foods. In addition, a multiple linear regression analysis was used to assess the influence of maternal and daughter’s acculturation in predicting the annual servings for each food group consumed. Mean differences at a P-value \u3c 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. On average, mothers consumed significantly more servings of vegetables than their daughters (102.46 vs. 45.19 annual servings). There were no significant differences between mother and daughter’s consumption of fruit, dairy, sweets, sweetened beverages and fried foods. Furthermore, this study did not find maternal acculturation to have an influence on their own consumption of the selected food groups. Child acculturation was found to have a significant influence on the consumption of dairy, but not fruits, vegetables, sweets, sweetened beverages and fried foods. The findings reported in this study suggest the need for culturally relevant interventions targeting overweight/obese Hispanic adolescent daughters and mother’s dietary patterns including fruits, vegetables, dairy, sweets, sweetened beverages or fried foods