Fostering Healthy Eating Habits

Fostering Healthy Eating Habits
By Mary Jane Rotheram, Ph.D.
June 10, 2011

“Health habits are not changed by an act of will.” 1 Changing eating habits is challenging. It is important for people to be aware of the many factors that can contribute to their success or failure in meeting their eating goals.2 Internal motivation, initiative, and responsibility are necessary for success, but results cannot be achieved from internal willpower alone. External factors have an important impact on eating behaviors in many ways, and ignoring environmental factors will lead to poor results.3, 4  

In most households, the person who purchases the food is the same person who cooks and prepares it, often taking on the role of the family’s nutritional gatekeeper. This assumed nutritional gatekeeper is in control of 72% of the food that is consumed by his/her children inside and outside of the house. It is vital that the nutritional gatekeeper recognize his or her influence on children’s eating habits inside the home and the choices they may make when eating outside of the house.5 With the right knowledge, it is possible for the nutritional gatekeeper to change the eating habits of the entire family.

When setting a goal for healthy eating, it is important that the whole family understands their motivation for this change. Children who are externally, rather than internally, motivated to eat healthy have a harder time achieving this goal. Education about the benefits of eating healthy will help them internalize the goal and make it their own.6, 7 However, education alone is not enough to change your family’s eating behavior. While knowledge about health risks is an important precondition for change, eating behavior interventions that focus mostly on providing health and nutritional information are not as successful as interventions based on behavioral theories that provide specific, positive methods for change.8

Parents encourage healthy eating through a variety of approaches. Unfortunately, some of the common means parents employ to achieve this goal are not only ineffective, but often have negative results. Rewarding children for eating their vegetables by offering them desert and enforcing rules such as “clean your plate at each meal” make it difficult for children to determine when they have reached satiety. Offering food as a reward or to make a child feel better, or withholding it as punishment, will cause the child to attach emotions to eating.9, 10 In trying to provide healthy food for their children and instill healthy eating habits, parents should keep in mind that creating rules around eating often has negative consequences. A much more effective approach is to make healthy foods consistently available and offer them in a desirable way.

Using environmental cues to help change your families eating habits is another simple and effective strategy to support healthy eating. Remove any distractions from the meal area, especially TV; people who are not paying attention to their meal as they eat tend to eat more and make less healthy food choices.11, 12, 13, 14 Do not make unhealthy foods readily available; buying snacks in bulk increases their consumption, even though it may save money.15 Displaying fruits and vegetables will encourage your children to eat these as snacks instead.16, 17 These are just a few ways that changing the eating environment can lead to more healthy eating decisions.

Finally, it is important for parents to model good eating behavior for their children. Eating with someone whose eating habits are relatively healthy has a positive influence on children’s efforts to change their own unhealthy habits. It also provides a model of success from whom children can learn skills and strategies for negotiating the challenges and temptations of today’s eating environment.18, 19

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