Nutritional quality of children’s diet and associations with parental cooking skills and nutritional awareness

Background: Child overweight and obesity are increasing public health problems and food habits among children are concerning. Healthy family food habits and basic parental nutrition and cooking skills are important for ensuring children receive an adequate diet. Objective: To explore the nutritional quality of 5-10-year-old Swedish children’s diets and associations with parental self-perceived cooking skills, awareness of nutrition guidelines, family cooking practices and demographic variables. Methods: A cross sectional online survey was responded by 72 parents. Nutritional quality was measured using The National Board of Health and Wellness’ Dietary Index. The survey also measured parental self-perceived cooking skills, awareness of nutrition guidelines, family cooking practices and demographic variables. Associations were tested with independent t-tests and Spearman rank correlations. Results: Mean Dietary Index score was 8.11, which indicates an unsatisfactory adherence to Nutrition Guidelines. Children’s food habits in this sample were better than in the national survey Riksmaten barn 2003, but intake levels of fruit, vegetables and fish was still below recommendations. Associations were found between children’s Dietary Index scores and parental cooking skills, nutritional awareness and frequency of child participating in cooking. No associations with demographic variables were found. Conclusions: Children’s diets are not in line with recommendations for 46 % of the participants, but appears to have improved since the latest national survey. Parental cooking skills, nutritional awareness and children participating in cooking more often was associated with better nutritional quality in children. The small sample size, participant heterogeneity and the recruitment method limits the generalizability of the results.