Parental feeding styles and adolescents’ healthy eating habits

This study designed and validated a questionnaire aimed at examining parental feeding styles to encourage healthy eating habits among Costa Rican adolescents. Adolescents (n = 133; mean age 15.4 years), and their parents, participated in the study. The parents completed a parental feeding style questionnaire, and the adolescents completed 3-day food records. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest four distinct parental feeding styles, (a) verbal encouragement of healthy eating behaviors; (b) use of verbal sanctions to indirectly control the intake of healthy food; (c) direct control of access to and intake of food; and (d) use of food to regulate emotions and behavior. There were no correlations between dietary intake and the verbal encouragement of healthy eating behaviors, but there were significant negative correlations between (1) ‘‘the use of verbal sanctions to indirectly control the intake of healthy food’’, and the consumption of fruit and vegetable, of calcium, iron, vitamin B6 and folic acid intake, and (2) between the ‘‘direct control of access to and intake of food’’ and fast food consumption and total carbohydrates intake. The use of food to regulate emotions and behavior was positively correlated with high energy-dense food consumption. Stratification of the data shows significant differences by gender in the correlations between parental feeding style and dietary intake. Understanding parental feeding styles in a Latin American context is a first step in helping researchers develops culturally-appropriate parenting intervention/prevention strategies to encourage healthy eating behaviors during adolescence.