Guardians’ food literacy and breakfast skipping among Japanese school children

Abstract

Children and adolescents who regularly skip breakfast are at a greater risk of obesity than those who regularly eat breakfast. Guardian's food literacy, defined in this study as a collection of a guardian's knowledge, skill, and attitude towards healthy food practices, may directly influence their child's dietary habits. Thus, this study utilized a food literacy scale to assess the relationship between guardians' food literacy and breakfast skipping among school-attending Japanese children and adolescents and the most commonly reported reasons for skipping breakfast. This was a cross-sectional study using survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of households in Japan (n = 1520). Our results show that 13.0% of children self-reported skipping breakfast at least once a week. Children in households where guardians reported higher knowledge and attitude scores had significantly lower odds of skipping breakfast (odds ratios = 0.90 [95% confidence interval: 0.83–0.98] and 0.81 [0.74–0.90], respectively). These findings suggest that a guardian's attitude and knowledge towards healthy food practices influence the frequency at which their child eats breakfast. Moreover, lower parental attitude scores were associated with children skipping due to not having enough time for breakfast in the morning. Improving guardians' food literacy may provide an avenue by which to decrease the rate of breakfast skipping among children and adolescents, thereby decreasing the risk of obesity and other adverse health outcomes.