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Milk and dairy products are rich in essential nutrients like vitamins A, K, various B vitamins, and calcium, crucial for skeletal growth, especially during childhood. Inadequate calcium intake during this period can lead to increased risks of bone-related diseases later in life, such as osteoporosis. Dairy products are among the most affordable and convenient sources of calcium in the American diet, providing around 115-120 mg of calcium per 100 g. While dairy also contains protein, carbohydrates, and various fats, excess saturated fat consumption is linked to health concerns like cardiovascular diseases and obesity. Surprisingly, studies have shown neutral or inverse associations between milk consumption and obesity in children.
International dietary guidelines recommend daily consumption of dairy products, but despite their nutritional benefits, milk consumption among children has declined in developed countries like Ireland, the USA, France, and Germany. Interventions to promote dairy consumption among school-aged and preschool-aged children have shown effectiveness, but most focus on larger dietary changes rather than specifically promoting dairy.
Children’s eating behaviors are influenced by various factors including personal preferences, family environment, and societal influences. Taste preferences established in childhood often persist into adulthood, making early interventions crucial. Parents play a significant role in shaping children’s food preferences and consumption through factors like knowledge, attitudes, socio-economic status, and feeding practices. However, parental involvement in interventions promoting dairy consumption is limited.
Existing research primarily focuses on parents’ influence on overall diet quality or specific food groups like fruits, vegetables, or sugary beverages, but there’s a gap in understanding how parents influence dairy consumption specifically. This review aims to explore the parent-related factors influencing dairy consumption among children aged 2–12 years.
A narrative literature review was conducted using PubMed, Embase, and PsycINFO databases in October and November 2020, with an update in January 2021. The search focused on papers published from 2001 to 2021, using specific search terms outlined in Table 1. Additional literature was found through Google searches and reference lists. Papers included in the review focused on children aged 2 to 12 and examined parent-related factors influencing milk or dairy consumption. Inclusion criteria required papers to be published in English academic journals and to report statistical significance, regardless of study design.
This review analyzed literature on parental influence on dairy consumption in 2–12-year-old children, focusing on socio-economic status, parental beliefs, availability, home environment, and feeding practices. It highlighted gaps and suggested future research directions. Socio-economic status showed inconsistent results, with higher status linked to higher dairy intake, aligning with previous findings on diet quality. However, more research is needed on modifiable factors like availability and parental behavior.
Home environment and availability’s impact on dairy consumption is underexplored, but parental influence, especially maternal, is significant. Parental food modeling, where parents eat in front of their children, influences dairy consumption. Children often value their parents’ dietary behaviors. Parental feeding style, like authoritarian or authoritative, also affects dairy intake. Authoritative feeding tends to promote healthier habits.
An authoritarian feeding style may negatively impact dairy intake, leading to overconsumption. Clear public health messaging is needed on dairy recommendations. Nutrition knowledge and beliefs play a role, though data on their direct influence on dairy intake are limited. More studies should focus specifically on dairy products to understand these influences.
The review also highlights a need for specificity in measuring dairy consumption, as many studies pool various dairy products. Examining milk, yogurt, and cheese separately may be more appropriate. Further research should focus on milk consumption alone, especially considering its decreasing trend and the lack of studies on modifiable factors influencing it.
This literature review is limited by its age restriction, excluding research on adolescents. However, the cutoff at 12 years may have excluded valuable data when children older than 13 were included in child samples. The reviewed studies cover a broad range of parental factors affecting children’s dairy consumption, but each category lacks substantial published research. Additionally, there’s inconsistency in how parental attitudes and knowledge were measured.
Methodological limitations exist due to inconsistent measurement and reporting of dairy consumption across studies, making direct comparisons difficult. Most studies are cross-sectional, limiting their ability to show the temporal nature of parental influence. Previous literature suggests differences in parental influence based on gender, with some studies indicating variance between mothers and fathers. However, most studies primarily involve mothers or female caregivers, highlighting the need for future research to include fathers or male caregivers to better understand their influence on children’s dairy consumption.
Research has explored various parental factors affecting children’s dairy consumption, but there’s a lack of in-depth investigation within each category. More studies are needed, especially focusing on modifiable parental factors, to pinpoint areas for intervention, particularly in children’s milk intake. Limited studies and study heterogeneity make it hard to draw conclusions, but it seems that social factors like parent feeding practices and their own dairy consumption may influence children’s dairy intake. Further research is necessary to understand how parents affect children’s consumption of different dairy products and how these factors interact.
Source:
Greene, Ellen, and Celine Murrin, ‘Parental Influences on Children’s Dairy Products Consumption: A Narrative Review’, Public Health Nutrition, 26 (2023), 976–93 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1368980022002555>