Predicting children's fussiness with vegetables: the role of feeding practices

Clare E. Holley, Emma Haycraft, Claire Farrow*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Vegetables are commonly rejected by children, making it is important to consider factors that are associated with children's fussiness with vegetables. The current study aimed to investigate whether fussiness with vegetables is associated with a number of factors including caregiver and child vegetable consumption; caregivers' general feeding practices; and caregivers' vegetable-specific feeding practices. Caregivers (N = 297) of preschool children completed questionnaire measures of their child's fussiness with vegetables, as well as several caregiver and child factors hypothesised to be associated with children's fussiness with vegetables. Findings indicate that children who are fussier with vegetables consume a smaller quantity of vegetables and that almost all have caregivers who eat a smaller quantity of vegetables. Children's fussiness with vegetables was not significantly related to any general feeding practices used by caregivers. However, children's fussiness with vegetables was significantly associated with the use of several vegetable specific feeding practices. Caregivers of fussier children used more encouragement/pressure to eat with vegetables (r = 0.14, p = .01), hid vegetables within other foods more often (r = 0.30, p = <.01), used more food rewards for vegetable consumption (r = 0.19, p <.01), more other rewards for vegetable consumption (r = 0.21, p < .01), and compromised more when feeding vegetables (r = 0.14, p = .01). These findings suggest that rather than caregivers' general feeding practices being related to children's fussiness with vegetables, the specific feeding practices used when vegetables are rejected are more significant. It may therefore be helpful to develop advice for caregivers about which feeding practices to avoid when faced with a child who is fussy about eating vegetables.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages9
JournalMaternal and Child Nutrition
Volume14
Issue number1
Early online date1 Mar 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Dec 2017

Bibliographical note

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Holley, C. E., Haycraft, E., & Farrow, C. (2017). Predicting children's fussiness with vegetables: the role of feeding practices. Maternal and Child Nutrition, in press., which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12442. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

Keywords

  • child
  • eating
  • feeding
  • fussiness
  • parent
  • vegetable

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