Family and community influences on fruit and vegetable intake among children living in a rural tribal community

Abstract

Children's fruit and vegetable (F/V) intake has been associated with parental diet, home food environment, and distance to food stores. It is unknown whether these factors influence F/V intake among American Indian (AI) children living in rural areas. A pilot study was conducted among 69 families living on a rural tribal reservation. Parents and children, aged 10–14 years, provided information on diet, home food environment and food security. The distance between families’ homes to food stores off the reservation was also measured. Median F/V intake for children was 2.4 servings/d (range: 0–7.4 servings/d) and families traveled a mean of 12 miles (range: 1.4–25.8 miles) to the nearest grocery store. Parental F/V intake, home F/V availability, and food security was not associated with child F/V intake. However, an increase of F/V intake in children was related to a decreases in parental snack food intake (r= −0.32, p= 0.04) and home snack food availability (r= −0.21, p= 0.16). Children with higher F/V intake lived closer to grocery stores (r = −0.14), but this relationship was not significant. Higher household income and parental education was non‐significantly related to higher F/V intake in children. Trends from these results suggest that parental diet, home, and community factors influence AI children's F/V intake. These findings suggest the importance of improving local F/V access in rural communities and the family food environment to increase F/V intake in children. This project was supported by the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, funded by an NIH CTSA (1 UL1 RR025011).