23/07/2024
📣Our study findings are now ready!📣
We found that:
1. When talking about children's weight, parents tended to focus on food, even though parents knew both food and activity were important for healthy weight. Diet culture seems to have a strong subconscious influence on how we talk about weight, even if we disagree with diet culture!
2. Parents knew health was complex, and parents felt BMI did not accurately measure health. Many parents therefore took issue with BMI being used as a "diagnosis" of overweight or obesity, as it did not take into account of different children and their situations.
3. Parents viewed food as nourishment which was important for development. Parents tried to ensure their children ate a variety of foods. Parents trusted children's bodies around their hunger, and felt that if children were hungry it's because they were growing. Children had relatively high autonomy around how much they ate and what they ate (or what they didn't eat), with a few rules here and there.
4. Parents took children to activities and places where they could play actively based on children's enjoyment and benefits for their overall development.
5. Finally, there were some things that made healthy living challenging. For one, all families were incredibly busy! That meant preparing food at home had to be very quick and easy. Some families raised issues around finding affordable things to do, particularly on weekends, as many activities were on during the working day, during term times.
If you'd like to find out more, you can take a look at our results here: https://osf.io/5a26u
Thank you to all the London parents and caregivers that took part 😊
Hosted on the Open Science Framework
