An examination of relevant factors affected to child health, food behavior, and lifestyle concerns of parents with infants age at least 18 months:

With a view to expanding into Shokuiku (food and nutrition education)

Abstract

Objectives: This study focused on food after weaning and examined the children's diet and home environmental factors that influence parents' concerns for his/her infants aged 1.6 and 3 years.

Methods: In the analysis, 646 participants, excluding invalid responses, who cooperated with the survey during health checkup for 1.6- and 3-year-old in the Tohoku, Chubu, and Chugoku regions from March 2019 to January 2020, were included. The survey included 56 items of dietary, lifestyle, and health concerns (yes/no answers), child attributes, and frequency of food intake (six options, 18 types). Concern factors were extracted by factor analysis. The association between the worry scores and each the diet and home environmental factor was analyzed.

Results: In the 1.6- and 3-year-olds, high scores for health awareness and lifestyle were associated with low fruit intake, high salty snacks intake, and low subjective economic status; high scores for diet content and atmosphere were associated with low intakes of carotene-rich vegetables, other vegetables, seaweed, and fruits; high scores for interest and motivation in food were associated with low carotene-rich vegetables intake; high scores for food experience and behavior were associated with high cereals (bread) intake and low subjective economic status. The 3-year-olds were associated with high scores and being boys.

Conclusion: We extracted four concern factors that parents have with his/her children after the weaning period and clarified the children's diet and home environmental factors related to the concern factors.