Snacking in young children: parental definitions, goals, and feeding practices

描述（由申请人提供）：零食被怀疑是导致幼儿摄入过多能量的原因。 家庭是了解儿童吃零食习惯如何发展的基本背景。 然而，还没有研究调查父母对低收入少数民族家庭儿童零食行为的影响，这些家庭特别容易患上 粮食不安全、饮食质量差和肥胖。 对零食的研究一直受到缺乏一个公认的，基于饮食学的零食定义的阻碍。 针对低收入的非裔美国人和西班牙裔家庭与学龄前儿童，这项研究将：定性描述父母对儿童吃零食的定义以及他们喂儿童吃零食的方法（目标1）~严格开发和测试这些结构的定量测量（目标2）~并评估父母对儿童吃零食的具体定义与（a）之间的关系父母的一般儿童喂养方法和方式（B）儿童的营养和体重相关结果（目标3）。本研究将通过从父母的角度对零食进行真实世界的实证表征，并开发第一个经验证的父母零食特定喂养实践措施，推进育儿和儿童零食的基础和转化科学。我们的跨学科研究团队包括儿童营养和儿童喂养，育儿和食物图式理论以及定性和定量方法的专家。 本研究的创新之处在于首次对父母对儿童零食的定义及其相关喂养方式进行了实证性描述，将食物图式研究与儿童喂养研究相结合，并将重点放在低收入少数民族儿童的零食问题上，这些儿童营养不良和肥胖的风险不成比例。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Snacking is suspected to contribute to excessive energy intake among young children. The family is a fundamental context for understanding how children's snacking habits develop. Yet, no studies have examined parenting effects on children's snacking behaviors for low-income ethnic minority families who are at particular risk of food insecurity, poor diet quality, and obesity. Research on snacking has been hindered by the lack of an accepted, empirically-based definition of snacking. Focusing on low-income African American and Hispanic families with preschool-aged children, this study will: qualitatively describe parents' definitions of child snacking and their approaches to feeding children snacks (Aim 1)~ rigorously develop and test a quantitative measure of these constructs (Aim 2)~ and evaluate relationships between parenting specific to child snacking and (a) parents' general child feeding practices and styles (b) children's nutrition and weight- related outcomes (Aim 3). This study will advance basic and translational science on parenting and child snacking through real-world empirical characterization of snacking from parents' perspective and development of the first validated measure of parents' snacking-specific feeding practices. Our interdisciplinary research team includes experts in children's nutrition and child feeding, theories of parenting and food schemas, and qualitative and quantitative methods. Innovations of the proposed research include the first empirical description of parents' definitions of child snacking and thei associated feeding approaches, the integration of research on food schemas and child-feeding, and the focus on snacking in low-income ethnic-minority children who are at disproportionate risk of poor nutrition and obesity.