Abstract
BackgroundCaregivers’ influence on young children’s eating behaviors is widely recognized. Nutritional interventions that focus on the promotion of children’s healthy diet should actively involve parents, focusing on their feeding behaviors and practices.MethodsThis work aims to describe the development and study protocol of the SmartFeeding4Kids (SF4K) program, an online self-guided 7-session intervention for parents of young (2–6 years old) children. The program is informed by social cognitive, self-regulation, and habit formation theoretical models and uses self-regulatory techniques as self-monitoring, goal setting, and feedback to promote behavior change. We propose to examine the intervention efficacy on children’s intake of fruit, vegetables, and added sugars, and parental feeding practices with a two-arm randomized controlled with four times repeated measures design (baseline, immediately, 3 and 6 months after intervention). Parental perceived barriers about food and feeding, food parenting self-efficacy, and motivation to change will be analyzed as secondary outcomes. The study of the predictors of parents’ dropout rates and the trajectories of parents’ and children’s outcomes are also objectives of this work.DiscussionThe SmartFeeding4Kids program relies on technological resources to deliver parents’ self-regulation techniques that proved effective in promoting health behaviors. The study design can enhance the knowledge about the most effective methodologies to change parental feeding practices and children’s food intake. As a self-guided online program, SmartFeeding4Kids might overcome parents’ attrition more effectively, besides being easy to disseminate and cost-effective.Trial registrationThe study was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04591496) on October 19, 2020.
Highlights
Childhood eating patterns are a growing public health concern, mainly because of low vegetable and fruit intake and high consumption of added sugars
Systematic reviews showed that program efficacy studies rely mostly on children’s nutritional-related variables and rarely assess parental feeding practices as an outcome [8,9,10], children’s autonomy and self-regulation promotion practices [8]
The program gives special attention to promoting feeding practices that encourage children’s eating self-regulation as developmentally appropriate and effective alternatives to coercive, restrictive, or permissive feeding practices. This web-based intervention is self-guided and includes self-regulation techniques to help parents become more aware of what feeding practices they are using and how frequently and implement changes according to their goals
Summary
Childhood eating patterns are a growing public health concern, mainly because of low vegetable and fruit intake and high consumption of added sugars. It is recognized that parents should be the focus of actions to promote a healthy diet in young children [1], mainly through changes in their feeding behaviors. Parental feeding practices have been associated with children’s food preferences [2, 3], energy intake, and body mass index (BMI) [4,5,6]. Several programs for parents of young children support them in implementing alternative strategies to coercive or permissive practices [7]. Caregivers’ influence on young children’s eating behaviors is widely recognized. Nutritional interventions that focus on the promotion of children’s healthy diet should actively involve parents, focusing on their feeding behaviors and practices
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