How much influence do we have on kids' diets?

Do you eat like your parents did? And do your kids eat like you do, or will they? Growing up, I recall eating fairly healthy food—soda was a rare treat, for example—but I also remember that hamburger was on the menu quite regularly. These days, I wish I managed to eat half as well as my parents do (tons of veggies, few carbs and dairy, small portions of lean meats and seafood).

Unfortunately, new research tells me that I might not learn from my parents' example very well, nor will my children learn from the examples and guidelines I establish for them. A study published recently in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine argues that the link between children's and their parents' eating habits is weak.

"Child-parent dietary resemblance in the U.S. is relatively weak, and varies by nutrients and food groups and by the types of parent-child dyads and social demographic characteristics such as age, gender and family income," wrote Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. "Our findings indicate that factors other than family and parental eating behaviors may play an important role in affecting American children’s dietary intakes," Wang said in a press release announcing the results of the study. Coauthor May Beydoun identified some of those factors as community and school, food environment, peer influence, TV viewing, and individual self-image and self-esteem.

The good news is that intervening when kids are very young interventions might help, Wang said: "We suspect that the child-parent resemblance in dietary intake may have become weaker over time, due to the growing influence of other factors outside of the family." I hope so!