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Conducting kitchen experiments to hide vegetables in your kids? food is practically a rite of passage for parents these days. Have you shoved yet another forkful of steamed broccoli into your own mouth, with a fake smile plastered on your face for the whole family to see, to set a good example" Or whirred leafy kale and spinach into breakfast smoothies" Check and check. (Still want to pull out your hair, like me" Check.)
Well, there might be a tool in your house more suited than your blender at getting the job done, and his name is Dad.
It turns out that at the dinner table?and actually, everywhere else kids see you eat?a father?s food modelling (in other words, what he puts in his mouth) has more influence than mothers on what their children consume. ?It does look like dads matter, and in some cases they might actually matter more than moms,” says Jess Haines, associate director of the Guelph Family Health Study. Launched at the University of Guelph in Ontario about two years ago, the massive study is following 3,000 families over 10 to 20 years to identify risk factors for obesity and chronic disease early in life. It will also test a slate of interventions?behaviour changes that have historically been aimed just at moms?that researchers hope will put whole families on a healthy track, from early toddler years onward.
One aspect of the study, which involves families with children from 18 months to five years old, looks specifically ...