Children Family Food Choice Motives among Parents of Healthy Weight and Overweight School-Aged: a Mixed Method Study

Objective: To identify and compare parental Food Choice Motives (FCM) between healthy weight and overweight/obese children. Methods: The study used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design conducting quantitative survey followed by participant interviews. Forty parents of healthy weight children and 42 parents of overweight/obese children (6-17 years) completed FCM surveys in their homes (quantitative phase) followed by in depth interviews (qualitative phase) with a subsample of 25 parents of 11 healthy weight and 14 overweight/obese regarding FCM. Results: Motives of food’s taste and health value scored highest among all the parents. Mood (17.9 ± 4.8 vs. 15.7±4.5, P=0.03) and weight control related motive scores (15.9 ± 3.9 vs. 13.1 ± 3.4, P=0.001) were higher among parents of overweight/obese children compared to parents of healthy weight children. During interviews, parents of both healthy weight and overweight/obese children had similar views regarding price, convenience in food preparation, children’s taste preference and food familiarity as important FCM. Parents of overweight/obese children mentioned that lack of support from other family members influenced their FCM while this was not expressed by parents of healthy weight children. Conclusions: parents considered food’s health value as an important motive, they often traded healthy foods with unhealthy foods due to other factors such as price, convenience, familiarity, and children’s taste preference. The results provide a further understanding of parental FCM.