Key takeaways:
- Kids’s consuming habits could also be influenced by the standard of their father’s food plan when he was an adolescent.
- Early dietary intervention from PCPs may have an intergenerational impact, a researcher mentioned.
ORLANDO — Males’s consuming habits in adolescence could supply a clue to their kids’s future dietary well being, in response to a presentation on the annual NUTRITION assembly.
Mariane H. De Oliveira, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Boston Faculty, advised Healio that she and her colleagues “wished to know whether or not fathers’ dietary habits earlier than they even change into dad and mom — significantly throughout adolescence — may affect how they strategy feeding their very own kids later in life.”
“This is a crucial topic as a result of most preconception well being analysis and public well being messaging has centered on moms. But fathers play a big function in shaping their kids’s consuming environments and habits,” De Oliveira mentioned. “Our research helps fill this hole by exploring the long-term affect of adolescent food plan high quality on meals parenting practices and youngsters’s diet.”
De Oliveira and colleagues evaluated information from 669 fathers collaborating within the Rising Up Immediately Research — 90% of whom had been white and 80% of whom had no less than a bachelor’s diploma, which can restrict the findings’ broader applicability, in response to a press launch. They answered questionnaires about their consuming habits after they had been adolescents and later provided details about their behaviors and attitudes surrounding their youngsters’ diets.
The researchers discovered that fathers who adhered to the Wholesome Consuming Index-2020 (HEI-2020) throughout adolescence had been extra prone to monitor and mannequin wholesome consuming habits at dwelling, that means that they had been extra prone to “actively observe or control their little one’s consumption of sweets and snack meals” and “show wholesome consuming habits by consuming nutritious meals in entrance of their kids,” De Oliveira mentioned.
“The hyperlink we discovered means that dietary habits fashioned throughout adolescence can carry over into maturity and affect parenting behaviors,” she added.
Extra particularly, these whose food plan high quality was higher throughout adolescence had been 60% extra prone to monitor their kids’s diets and 90% extra prone to mannequin wholesome consuming after they grew to become fathers than those that had a poor food plan in adolescence. Equally, their kids had been extra prone to eat the beneficial quantities of vegetables and fruit than the youngsters of fathers who had poor diets as adolescents.
“Moreover, there was a borderline important affiliation with the meals setting, indicating that these fathers additionally tended to create more healthy dwelling meals settings by limiting the provision of unhealthy meals,” De Oliveira mentioned. “Because of this, kids of fathers who elevated their adherence to the HEI-2020 throughout adolescence had been extra prone to devour vegetables and fruit a number of occasions per day, assembly U.S. dietary guideline suggestions.”
De Oliveira mentioned main care suppliers can use the findings to tell their scientific observe.
“PCPs ought to acknowledge adolescence and younger maturity as important intervals for shaping long-term well being — not only for people, however for his or her future households,” she mentioned. “Our findings recommend that enhancing adherence to the HEI-2020 in younger males may have intergenerational advantages. PCPs can incorporate this into anticipatory steering and well being promotion by addressing food plan high quality even in sufferers who aren’t but fascinated by parenthood.”
“The well being behaviors of future fathers matter — lengthy earlier than they’ve kids,” she continued. “Encouraging wholesome dietary patterns in adolescent and younger grownup males is an funding not solely in their very own future well being but additionally within the well being and dietary well-being of the subsequent era.”
De Oliveira mentioned the research’s findings additionally reinforce “the significance of together with fathers in public well being efforts round diet and parenting.”
“Supporting wholesome habits in younger males must be a part of broader methods to advertise household and little one well-being,” she concluded.
For extra info:
Mariane De Oliveira, PhD, might be reached at mariane.deoliveira@bc.edu.
References:
- De Oliveira M, et al. Summary OR02-07-25. Offered at: NUTRITION; Might 31-June 3, 2025; Orlando.
- High quality of children’ diets linked with dad’s consuming habits as a teen. Accessible at: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1084811. Printed Might 31, 2025. Accessed June 4, 2025.
