Child Care Providers' Strategies for Supporting Healthy Eating: A Qualitative Approach

Abstract

Recent research has revealed child care settings and providers to be important influences on children's developing behaviors. Yet most research on children's nutritional development has focused on home settings and parents. Thus, through semistructured interviews with child care providers, this study aimed to develop a better understanding of the strategies they perceive to encourage healthy eating in child care settings. Results revealed that providers employ a range of strategies, many of which focus on short-term goals that do not promote the development of healthy long-term nutritional behaviors. By using a social ecological lens, the authors found providers use these strategies due to a combination of pressures from the personal and societal levels of influence. Furthermore, the method of semistructured interviewing allowed for a better understanding of child care settings not achieved through quantitative research. These findings can be used to improve nutritional information sources aimed at providers by considering the challenges specific to child care settings.