Healthy eating habits at home and childcare centres among a large group of New Zealand 3 year olds

What is it about?

Healthy eating habits develop early in life and are influenced by the food-related behaviours of parents and childcare teachers/staff. This study looks at a representative group of New Zealand 3 year olds to see if their parents and caregivers at their childcare centre are following recommended food-related behaviours (such as sitting with children to eat, talking to them about food, not rushing them to eat etc.). We found differences in the behaviours of parents and caregivers, and that only a small number of children had caregivers that follow the guidelines in both their home and childcare centre.

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Why is it important?

Children need consistent, positive messaging about food and healthy eating in early childhood. This study shows that more nutrition training of staff is needed in childcare centres and that currently many staff are not following best-practice guidelines. Current health promotion programmes appear to help with this issue, as children in the most deprived/poor areas in this study (who are more likely to attend a childcare centre involved in a programme) were more likely to have staff following recommended behaviours.

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