Evaluating Nutrition Knowledge in Parents and Its Relation to Childhood Obesity

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between parental nutrition knowledge and their child’s body mass index (BMI) to identify variables that are associated with increased obesity in American children. A cross-sectional study design was employed with a convenience sample of 464 parents of children between the ages of 2 and 12. Parents completed a GNKQ-R (General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire – Revised) survey to measure nutrition knowledge. Parents reported their child’s height and weight which was later calculated and categorized according to the Center for Disease Control’s BMI-for-age growth chart. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test for Normality was conducted to examine the distribution of both variables. The results showed the data for both variables were not normally distributed (BMI: p = <0.001, Score: p < 0.001). This result lead to the use of a non-parametric Spearman correlation to assess the association between parental nutrition knowledge and their child’s BMI percentile. Parental nutrition knowledge scores and child BMI had a significant positive correlation (r=0.177; p<0.001). As the parental nutrition knowledge score went up, so did child’s BMI percentile. This study highlights the relationship between nutrition education of parents and their child’s BMI percentile. This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between parental nutrition knowledge and child BMI percentile indicating the need for further research to determine if parental nutritional knowledge could affect child BMI.