Nov. Question 3
After reading the continuing education article and the
two supplemental articles, how significant of a role do you think early
childhood obesity prevention interventions can actually play in reducing
childhood obesity rates?
It is clear that many factors influence a young child’s (age
2-5 years) risk of becoming obese including genetics, food choice availability,
parental feeding practices, and childcare provider feeding practices. Parents
may use CFP at home to influence their children’s eating behaviors, despite
effort on the childcare providers’ end to avoid CFP use. How do you think parents and childcare
providers can work together to promote healthy eating behavior and nutritious
habits in young children (ages 2-5 years)?
posted by Kirsten @ 3:18 PM
12 comments
12 Comments:
As this study noted, we understand that habits, such as food and exercise, form very early in life, sometimes before elementary school ages. Therefore, health interventions beginning at preschool age would be an appropriate target to begin encouraging healthy eating habits. If a training program existed as discussed in question 2, I think child care providers would need to share the rationale and purpose of the program with the parents through a meeting, email, pamphlet etc. Everyone in the child's life would need to be on board to have the best results. Maybe this is something public health committees could be responsible for planning, initiating, and monitoring.
To be effective, avoidance of CFPs would need to be carried over to elementary school and beyond. If children get consistent messages about eating practices though childhood, I imagine they would be more likely to adhere to more mindful eating habits into young adulthood and eventually as parents. I don't know if these would be feasible or how it would work, but in a perfect world, CFPs would be discouraged on a multi-system basis.
I do believe that health interventions starting at ages 2-5 would provide a significant effect on obesity rates in the future. Exposing children to the foods available and making food an exciting thing starting young can build that curiosity to try more in the future and not see food in a negative light ("you can't leave the table until you clean your whole plate"). In order to effectively promote healthy eating behaviors for children, exposing them both in school and at home is crucial so the children don't get mixed messages. I find it would be a big step to start these feeding practices in schools, as there are so many children, some bringing lunch, some buying lunch, some low income, etc. As the staff are monitoring the children all day, lunch is a time for relaxation for both the children and staff to an extent and I feel there would be pushback for this practice to become effective.
Justine, as you mentioned, the consistency is key for children to be able to carry these practices over to young adulthood and eventually parents. Based on my above response, I agree that it would be very difficult for this to work over a multi system basis, but that direction I believe would provide the most significant results.
I believe starting early as possible is the best time to promote healthy eating behaviors. There are many factors that affect one’s risk for becoming obese, and starting to focus on HFP at a young age will provide children with a better platform for reduced obesity risk. I think communication between parents and childcare providers are essential. Childcare providers want to make sure the children are well nourished and are eating, to prevent upset from parents. Parents on the other hand may be more concerned with HFP. Parents need to communicate to childcare providers their goals and expectations. HFP need to be consistent at home and at childcare to be effective. I think communication is essential for HFP to take place within childcare facilities!
Tessa, I think your statement to increase communication amongst childcare providers at early ages an parents is crucial in implementing HFP. Direct communication will be necessary to educate both parties of the benefits and implementation of HFP. Children would make a poor messenger in expressing new feeding practices to parents, who are concerned for the child's level of care.
I do consider CFP to be a contributing factor of childhood obesity; however, practices of eating all of your meals and strict adherence to limit certain foods have been implemented historically for multiple generations. More red button issues include the provision of healthy options to place on the plate and exhibition of healthy eating behaviors by childcare and parental models. Modeling may be beneficially combined with HFP to increase child's decision to try new foods, and eat a complete meal.
As this question mentions, I believe prevention of childhood obesity runs much deeper than just removing CFP from the picture. The reason reducing the prevalence of childhood obesity has posed such a challenge for today's society is exactly for this reason: multiple factors come into play, such as genetics, reduced physical activity, convenience foods, sugar sweetened beverages... etc. I think parents and childcare providers should work together to try to debunk all the fad knowledge in the media are strive to get back to traditional feeding practices. Simply put, eating more meals at home as a family, cooking with whole ingredients, and trying to get the kids involved in the cooking process can go a long way in creating healthy habits into adulthood. Removing "fat talk" and "dieting" talk in a household can also aid in creating an overall positive environment for children and allow them to grow up mindfully.
I believe it is never to early to promote and encourage healthy eating habits. However, I think that there is more than one cause for the increase in childhood obesity over the past years. Consistency as Justine mentioned is a very important factor and as we teach children good habits its important to continue promotion good habits as they grow. Overall, I don't have a answer to solve childhood obesity but I think as RD's we have great knowledge to share to parents and children!
Tessa I also agree with what you said it is also important to be consistent between childcare providers and at home. The more consistent the better!
The key to early childhood obesity prevention intervention, I believe, is consistency. Therefore, there needs to be a continual effort on the part of all the child’s care providers (parents, childcare providers, educators, & healthcare) to provide a consistent form of food influence for that child. Since, every situation and child is different the same approach to promote healthy eating behaviors and habits is not appropriate. The approach taken may vary, but everyone involved needs be on the same page; this may require daily face to face contact, weekly/monthly/quarterly meetings, or the occasional conference call, it depends entirely on the situation and the risk factor(s) for the child. Demonstrating the knowledge and expertise we have as RDs, when it comes to these issues, we should not be afraid to do everything in our power to help promote healthy eating behaviors and nutrition habits for everyone involved.
I feel that early intervention strategies can reduce the incidence of childhood obesity, but only if they are implemented appropriately. The first supplemental article had a great visual that shows all of the differing environments a child is exposed to, which all can ultimately impact child feeding practices. I feel that intervention should be broad in order to cover the different environments (school home, community, etc.). However, I believe that education can only go so far. As needed, I feel that we should connect families with the resources necessary to get access to healthful foods first. Once reliable access to healthful foods is addressed, then we can focus on education and other intervention tactics.
I agree with Kandice that consistency is key. It is important to not present conflicting information for parents and childcare providers because it will result in a lack of implementation of early intervention strategies.
Noel, I agree with you that reviving traditional feeding practices such as eating family meals, cooking at home, and encouraging kids to get involved in mealtime would be beneficial in promoting healthy feeding practices. This may help children build a more wholesome relationship with food. It seems some communities are getting back to this with farmers markets and more local foods, but it still has a long way to go before this may influence obesity.
Tessa, I agree with you that starting as early as possible is the best time to promote healthy eating behaviors. Your point on communication between everyone in the care of children is also key, Tessa. Justine, I think you brought up a good point, that in order for any intervention to be effective it needs to be carried over to elementary school and beyond. This will reinforce the message and limit the chances of unhealthy foods habits to grow during these developing years.
Nikki, I enjoyed your comment on how schools may be the easiest place to start in promoting healthy eating practices early on. While it would be great to educate parents in a community setting about proper feeding practices and reducing CFP's-- I believe it would be difficult (as it typically is in the community setting) to get high attendance for such a program. Schools would be an easy way to gain maximum attendance and perhaps give children a take-home newsletter or host a parent night to also inform the parents on what their young children are being exposed to at the school.
How can parents and childcare providers work together to promote healthy eating behaviors and habits? There are many ways that these populations can work together to accomplish this. One way to facilitate this could be to have childcare providers talk to parents about their views on CFP as soon as a child enrolls in that daycare. Dietitians could create a handout on this topic for childcare providers. Then, they could provide parents with the handout and talk about the importance of this to be done both at the childcare facility and at home. I think that the key to getting parents to “buy into” this is by emphasizing the findings of recent studies on CFP. I could understand why parents and childcare providers may have a hard time resisting CFP as it seems to go against “motherly/fatherly instincts”. Research is very important!
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