How Parents’ Beliefs About Food Could Be Fuelling Childhood Obesity

A child placing his hand on a plate full of vegetables

In recent years, childhood obesity has become a growing concern, with alarming rates of children facing long-term health consequences. While many factors can contribute to this issue, an often-overlooked contributor is parents’ perceptions of food. Parents’ beliefs about what is healthy, how much children should eat and whether food should be used as a reward can profoundly affect children’s eating habits and weight.

Therefore, Professor Elaine Chan (Nanyang Technological University) and her co-authors studied how caregivers’ food beliefs shape their parenting practices and children’s eating behaviours. They investigated how caregivers believe a trade-off between healthiness and tastiness influences their use of extrinsic rewards to encourage healthy eating. They also examined how this belief affects children’s food consumption and body mass index (BMI).

"In the US, people are more likely to believe that unhealthy food is tasty, while this belief is less common in France. We wanted to explore how these different beliefs lead parents to use different strategies, which ultimately affect their children’s eating habits, health and consumption of unhealthy food", said Professor Elaine on the motivations behind the research.

‘Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition’ (UTI), Food Parenting Practices and Unhealthy Food Consumption

When parents or caregivers strongly believe in the UTI, they are more likely to perceive healthy food as less tasty. As a result, they tend to think that healthy food alone will not be appealing enough to their children. They believe extra incentives, such as rewards, are needed to compensate for the food’s perceived lack of tastiness. This belief increases parents’ likelihood of using extrinsic rewards, such as stickers or snacks, to encourage healthy eating. Unfortunately, this strategy often backfires, as it implicitly signals that the rewards are more valuable than healthy food. Ironically, this can lead to increased unhealthy food consumption and, over time, a higher BMI in children.

A child stepping on the weighing machine to measure their weight

Studies

To test their hypotheses, the researchers conducted five studies to examine the impact of parent’s food beliefs on children’s healthy eating habits. Across different cultures (including the USA, UK, China and Japan), Study 1 found that parents and caregivers with stronger UTI beliefs were more likely to use extrinsic rewards to encourage healthy eating, increasing their children’s BMI. Next, Studies 2 and 3 examined the entire framework and showed that parents’ UTI beliefs increased their children’s BMI owing to their use of extrinsic rewards, which inadvertently increased their unhealthy food consumption.

While earlier studies demonstrated the link between parents’ UTI beliefs, the likelihood to use extrinsic rewards and the consequent risk for their children’s weight, later studies examined possible intervention strategies to break the link. In Study 4, the researchers influenced caregivers’ UTI beliefs through an article. Those who read an article highlighting the negative association between healthiness and tastiness in food were more likely to use rewards to encourage children to finish healthy food than those who read an article on the positive association between healthiness and tastiness. Lastly, Study 5 tested an intervention to reduce the reliance on rewards for parents with strong UTI beliefs. We asked parents to take some time to reflect on what should be right. This intervention prompted parents with strong UTI beliefs to assess the appropriateness of rewards and reduced their likelihood of using rewards to encourage their children’s healthy eating.

Practical Implications

A woman ensuring that her two children are eating their food

Overall, the studies show that parents’ and caregivers’ UTI beliefs can contribute to an increase in children’s BMIs by encouraging the use of extrinsic rewards, which may unintentionally promote unhealthy eating habits. This highlights the importance for policymakers and educators to avoid using extrinsic rewards to promote healthy eating, as these strategies often lead to harmful outcomes. Instead, they should focus on endorsing the appealing taste of nutritious foods.

Furthermore, interventions that weaken parents’ UTI beliefs may reduce their reliance on extrinsic rewards and improve children’s long-term health outcomes. This suggests that addressing parental beliefs and feeding practices could have significant benefits in combating childhood obesity.

Professor Elaine added, "Rather than emphasising the healthiness of the food, which can make parents think it would not be tasty, we recommend framing healthy food as delicious. This way, parents would not feel the need to use extrinsic rewards, as the food itself will encourage their kids to eat it."

Note: This research paper was published by the Journal of Consumer Research (Oxford Academic) in April 2024.

Elaine Chan is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Nanyang Business School. Her research interests focus on understanding consumer behaviour. In particular, she is interested in how interpersonal influences and lay beliefs influence consumers’ attitudes, motivation and behaviour. Her research has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. She currently sits on the editorial review board of the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Consumer Psychology.