“More than buying extra fruits and veggies, please hide the fats and sugars”: children’s diet latent profiles and family-related factors

• Published in: Nutrients 2021-07, Vol.13 (7), p.1-14
• Main Authors: Pereira, Beatriz, Silva, Cátia, Núñez, José Carlos, Rosário, Pedro, Magalhães, Paula
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Beverages; Children; Data collection; Diet; Diet profiles; Domestic relations; Eating; Eating behavior; elementary school-aged children; Families & family life; Family income; Fast food; Food; Food availability; Food consumption; Fruits; Health care; Hypotheses; Illustrations; Income; Information management; Low income groups; Milk; Multivariate analysis; Oils & fats; Parental encouragement; Public health; Questionnaires; Science & Technology; Students; Sugar; Vegetables
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu13072403

Promoting children’s healthy diets is a key public health priority. Family can play a relevant role in children’s eating patterns. The goals of the current research were to identify different latent diet profiles in children based on their food consumption and to assess the relationship between profiles and family-related factors. A total of 678 school-aged children from the fifth and sixth grades participated. The study design was cross-sectional and questionnaire based. Research assessed healthy (fruit and vegetables) and unhealthy (fast food, sugar-sweetened beverages, and candies) food consumption and family-related factors. A latent profile analysis and multivariate data analysis were developed. Four diet profiles were identified: Combined Diet, Mainly Healthy Diet, Mainly Unhealthy Diet, and Very Unhealthy Diet. Nearly half of the children (45.22%) showed a Combined Diet profile, meaning that they reported eating nearly the same amount of healthy and unhealthy types of foods. Associations between the diet profiles, family income, and food availability were found. For example, the Mainly Healthy Diet profile was statistically associated with a higher family income and less access to unhealthy foods. The present study reinforces the idea that profiling diets can allow for a tailored healthy eating intervention model according to the specific needs of each diet profile. This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (CIPsi/UM) School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (UIDB/01662/2020). Additionally, this research was funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and by Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, grant number PTDC/PSI-GER/28302/2017, and cofunded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement, grant number POCI-01-0145-FEDER-028302. This research was also funded by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, through the national funds, within the scope of the Transitory Disposition of the Decree No. 57/2016, of 29 August, amended by Law No. 57/2017 of 19 July. BP was funded by a Doctoral research grant from Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, grant number SFRH/BD/143469/2019, and CS was funded by a Postdoctoral research grant awarded by the project “In-person and Online