Is Our Lack of Involvement to
Blame Now?
Parents play a big role in children’s
life, in fact at around age 8 or 9 the children are influenced the most by
their parents. Stating that, what the parents do, say, act, and EAT are all
factors children perceive when watching their parents. Scientists in Japan have
realized this, and planned to discover if there was a link between children’s
nutritional health, diet, and cooking skills, and how they help in preparing
meals for the family.
In order to get a wide spectrum of
results the Japanese scientists recruited 1,447 students age 10-11, with one of
their parents. The schoolchildren were represented from nineteen schools, from
six different cities, in four prefectures. Of the 1,447 that were recruited
1,231 actually participated in the study. 1,207 of the 1,231 showed
participation of meal preparation. To specify what assistance the children are
doing with their parents, the scientists made categories on helping:
“food-related activities (cooking only or with other activities such as
shopping, table-setting, clean up, and dishwashing), non food-related activities
(table setting and/or clean up), and no (helping) activities” (Cooking Skills,
Abstract). As for food group (grains, vegetables, etc.) intake the children
completed surveys that asked, “Eat every day, 4-5 days a week, 2-3 days a week,
and rarely eat” (Cooking Skills, Measures of Interest). To test cooking skills
the scientists asked a simple yes or no question, “Can you make a portion of a
meal yourself?” (Cooking Skills, Measures of Interest).
Observing
this, it is evident that kids who do not help in at-home food preparation are
more likely to not eat important foods consistently. This study proves the
importance of instilling a system in which children can be educated on what to
eat, and how to make it at home. These statistics from this Japanese study show
across the chart figures that involving your children in cooking their palate
will crave healthier food options than children that do not have contact with
the food. Since these children at this age observe their parents the most
around this age, whatever their parents say, do, or eat will be absorbed to
their brains. So it is in the best hope for future generations to make a change
in the way the United States deals with the integration of cooking in
children’s lives here.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880737/
By: Kevin Dehbozorgi
Quantifying parental preferences for
interventions designed to improve home food preparation and home food
environments during early childhood
I decided to focus on
this scholarly article which I found on science direct and this article talks
about improving home food preparation practices and the parent’s role as
well. The article stated that “A higher frequency of either family
meals or home prepared food was associated with a healthier diet.” By eating at home more and with increasing
family meals, you’re not only breaking unhealthy habits for yourself but also
showing a healthier lifestyle and routine to your child if you have one. This
article discussed how there is a window of opportunity when children go from
milk, and liquids to completely solid food which is usually when they are
around a few months old. This makes me
think back to my cousin who has never had a soda in her life and always
prepares her food at home. Her parents
showed her the right eating habits at a very young age which turned out to be
very essential because now she never has any temptations to eat at a fast food
place for instance and she knows how to prepare healthy home meals and a
variety of them. She can now teach her
future children the healthy eating habits and home food preparation that she
learned from her parents.
By: Quinlan Berger
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