HEALTH EDUCATION RESEARCH
3 2004
Theory & Practice
Children's eating attitudes and behaviour: a study of
the modelling and control theories of parental
in¯uence1
1 1,2
Rachael Brown and Jane Ogden
Abstract
The present study compared the modelling and
control theories of parental in¯uence on chil-
dren's eating attitudes and behaviour with a
focus on snack foods. Matched questionnaires
describing reported snack intake, eating motiv-
ations and body dissatisfaction were completed
by 112 parent/child pairs. Parents completed
additional items relating to control in terms of
attempts to control their child's food intake
and using food as a tool for controlling beha-
viour. The results showed signi®cant correl-
ations between parent and child for reported
snack intake, eating motivations and body dis-
satisfaction, indicating an important role for
modelling. Parents were then divided accord-
ing to their control scores. Children whose par-
ents indicated greater attempts to control their
child's diets reported higher intakes of both
healthy and unhealthy snack foods. In addition,
those children whose parents indicated a
greater use of food as a means to control their
child's behaviour reported higher levels of
body dissatisfaction. The results provide some
support for both the modelling and control the-
ories of parental in¯uence. However, whereas
modelling appears to have a consistent impact,
parental control has a differential impact
depending upon whether this control is focused
1Department of General Practice, Guys Kings and
St Thomas' School of Medicine, Kings College London,
5 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6SP, UK
2Correspondence to: J. Ogden;
E-mail: Jane.Ogden@kcl.ac.uk
Health Education Research Vol.19 no.3, ã Oxford University Press 2004; All rights reserved
Vol.19 no.
Pages 261±271
on the child's diet or on other aspects of their
behaviour. To conclude, a positive parental
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
role model may be a better method for improv-
ing a child's diet than attempts at dietary
control.
Introduction
Understanding children's eating attitudes and
behaviour is important in terms of children's
health. Evidence also indicates that dietary habits
acquired in childhood persist through to adulthood
(Kelder et al., 1994; Nicklas, 1995; Steptoe et al.,
1995). In addition, research also indicates a role for
childhood nutrition on adult health (Hales et al.,
1991; Moller et al., 1994; Berenson et al., 1998).
Much research also shows that many children's
diets in the Western world are unsatisfactory. For
example, the Bogalsua Heart Study in the US
showed that the majority of 10 year olds exceeded
the American Heart Association dietary recom-
mendations for total fat, saturated fat and dietary
cholesterol (Nicklas, 1995). A survey in the UK
showed a similar picture, with 75% of children
aged 10±11 exceeding the recommended target
level for percentage of energy derived from fat
(Butriss, 1995). Comparable results have also been
reported by Wardle (Wardle, 1995) and Currie et al.
(Currie et al., 1997).
There has been a range of explanations offered
to understand why children eat what they eat. Lack
of knowledge has been implicated as causing poor
diets, but is not explanation enough as health
education campaigns have had limited success in
changing eating habits (Gatherer et al., 1979).
Other research has focused on social cognition
DOI: 10.1093/her/cyg040
R. Brown and J. Ogden
models, but most studies using this approach have
focused on adults rather than children and those
which have explored children's diets have left
much of the variance in eating behaviour unex-
plained (Resnicow et al., 1997).
An alternative approach to children's diets
has focused on developmental theories, and
emphasizes the in¯uence of signi®cant others on
a child's development of food preferences and
eating habits. In line with Social Learning Theory
[e.g. (Bandura, 1977)], some research has high-
lighted the role of observational learning and
modelling. In one study, peer modelling was used
to change children's preference for vegetables
(Birch, 1980). The target children were placed at
lunch for 4 consecutive days next to other children
who preferred a different vegetable to themselves
(peas versus carrots). By the end of the study the
children showed a shift in their vegetable prefer-
ence which persisted at a follow-up assessment
several weeks later. The impact of observational
learning has also been shown in an intervention
study designed to change children's eating
behaviour using video based peer modelling
(Lowe et al., 1998).
Research has also focused on the role of parents
and Wardle (Wardle, 1995) contended that:
Parental attitudes must certainly affect their
children indirectly through the foods purchased
for and served in the household¼in¯uencing the
children's exposure and¼their habits and pref-
erences.
Some evidence supports an important role for
parents. For example, Klesges et al. (Klesges et al.,
1991) showed that children selected different foods
when they were being watched by their parents
compared to when they were not. Olivera et al.
(Olivera et al., 1992) reported a correlation
between mothers' and children's food intakes for
most nutrients in pre-school children, and sug-
gested targeting parents to try to improve chil-
dren's diets. Likewise, Contento et al. (Contento
et al., 1993) found a relationship between mothers'
health motivation and the quality of children's
diets. Food preferences therefore change through
262
watching others eat. Research also indicates that
children may not only model their parents' food
intake, but also their attitudes to food and their
body dissatisfaction. For example, Hall and Brown
(Hall and Brown, 1982) reported that mothers of
girls with anorexia show greater body dissatisfac-
tion than mothers of non-disordered girls.
Likewise, Steiger et al. (Steiger et al., 1994)
found a direct correspondence between mothers'
and daughters' levels of weight concern, and Hill
et al. (Hill et al., 1990) reported a link between
mothers' and daughters' degree of dietary restraint.
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
Research therefore emphasizes the role of observa-
tional learning with a particular role for parental
attitudes and behaviour.
Other studies have highlighted a role for parental
control. Some research has explored the impact of
controlling food intake by rewarding the consump-
tion of `healthy food' as in `if you eat your
vegetables I will be pleased with you'. For
example, Birch et al. (Birch et al., 1980) gave
children food in association with positive adult
attention compared with more neutral situations.
This was shown to increase food preference.
Similarly an intervention study using videos to
change eating behaviour reported that rewarding
vegetable consumption increased that behaviour
(Lowe et al., 1998). The relationship between food
and rewards, however, appears to be more com-
plicated than this. In one study, children were
offered their preferred fruit juice as a means to be
allowed to play in an attractive play area (Birch
et al., 1982). The results showed that using the
juice as a means to get the reward reduced the
preference for the juice and have been supported
by similar studies (Lepper et al., 1982; Birch et al.,
1984; Newman and Taylor, 1992). These examples
are analogous to saying `if you eat your vegetables,
you can eat your pudding'. Although parents use
this approach to encourage their children to eat
vegetables the evidence indicates that this may be
increasing their children's preference for pudding
even further as pairing two foods results in the
`reward' food being seen as more positive than the
`access' food. As concluded by Birch:

¼although these practices can induce children
to eat more vegetables in the short run, evidence
from our research suggests that in the long run
parental control attempts may have negative
effects on the quality of children's diets by
reducing their preferences for those foods.
[(Birch, 1999), p. 10]
Birch also reviewed the evidence for the impact of
imposing any form of parental control over food
intake and concluded that:
¼child feeding strategies that restrict children's
access to snack foods actually make the
restricted foods more attractive. [(Birch, 1999),
p. 11]
For example, when food is made freely available
children will choose more of the restricted than the
unrestricted foods particularly when the mother is
not present (Fisher and Birch, 1999).
In summary, children's diets are often poor and
research has addressed reasons for this. Some
studies have focused on modelling, and indicate
that children may model both their parent's eating
behaviour and also their eating related attitudes
and body dissatisfaction. Other studies have high-
lighted a role for control, and have indicated that
whilst many parents impose control over their
child's intake and use food to control their child's
behaviour, this may not always have the desired
positive effect. However, these two theories have
been mainly addressed independent of each other.
In line with this, the present study aimed to explore
the relationship between parents and children's
eating attitudes and behaviour, and to assess and
compare the modelling and control theories of
parental in¯uence. Much previous research has
explored children's diets in terms of major food
groups with an emphasis on staple foods such as
bread, pasta and vegetables. These foods make up
the content of a child's main meals throughout the
day and are part of a child's daily routine. In
contrast, snack foods such as sweets, chocolate,
grapes and toast are often eaten in between meals,
and can be sources of either con¯ict or pleasure.
Further, such snack foods often play an important
Children's diets
role as the currency central to the interaction
between parent and child. Therefore, the present
study aimed to explore the relative role of mod-
elling and control with a focus on the intake of
snack foods.
Method
Participants
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
Children aged between 9 and 13 were recruited
from two junior schools and one secondary school
in southern England. Children were approached by
either the researcher or a teacher at the school and
asked to give a consent form to their parents. It is
estimated that about 260 children were asked for
their consent and that 50% of children agreed to
take part. Questionnaires were then given to 137
parents and children and 112 pairs of completed
questionnaires were returned (response rate =
81.7%).
Design
The study used a dyadic design looking at pairs of
parents and children.
Procedure
A letter was sent to the head teachers of the
schools, explaining the nature of the project and
requesting participation from one of their year
groups. Information was then sent to parents
requesting consent for their children to participate
and asking if they would take part. On receiving
consent from parents, questionnaires were admin-
istered in the schools. Administration varied
according to the requests of the Head Teacher.
The questionnaires were administered in small
groups in one junior school, whole-class adminis-
tration in the other junior school, with items being
read out verbally to both. In the secondary school
the questionnaires were sent home. The children's
weight and height data was collected from the
schools either by the class teachers or the
researcher (R. B.).
263
R. Brown and J. Ogden
Measures
Children and parents received matched question-
naires consisting of the following items. The
internal reliability of the items was explored
where appropriate using Cronbach's a.
Pro®le characteristics
Participants were asked to state their age and
gender.
Reported snack food intake
Much previous research has focused on a wide
range of foods consumed including staple foods
such as pasta and bread, and snack foods such as
sweets and fruit. The present study aimed to
focus solely on the intake of snack foods as
these play a central role in the interaction between
parent and child, and are often the place where
many of the problems with food intake occur. In
line with this, participants circled the number of
times that a snack food item was eaten both
`yesterday' and `in general' using ®ve-point Likert
scales. For `yesterday' the scale ranged from 0 (0)
to 4+ times (4) and for `in general' the scale ranged
from `never' (0) to `every day' (4). The foods were
presented in a random order. They were analysed
both in terms of the individual food items and in
terms of total scores which were summated to
re¯ect `unhealthy' and `healthy' foods (range 0±4).
These foods were selected to provide some
preliminary insights into the kinds of snacks that
children and their parents eat. The measure was not
designed to comprehensively assess all foods
eaten.
Unhealthy snack foods: chocolate, crisps, pas-
tries, ice cream, sweets, cakes and biscuits
(children's a = 0.71, adult's a = 0.63).
Healthy snack foods: grapes, oranges, peaches,
yoghurt, toast and apples (children's a = 0.69,
adult's a = 0.48).
Motivations to eat
Participants rated eight items using a ®ve-point
Likert scale, following the statement `How
often do you feel like eating when...' [never
(1), not very often (2), sometimes (3), very often
264
(4), always (5)]. These were derived from the
Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (Van Strien
et al., 1986) and summated to create total scores
(range 1±5).
Internal motivation. Four items measured
internal motivation: `you have nothing to do',
`are frightened', `are feeling upset', `are feeling
cross'. A higher score re¯ected greater levels of
internal motivation (children's a = 0.59; parent's
a = 0.69).
External motivation. Four items measured exter-
nal motivation: `If you walk past a bakery sweet
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
shop or cafe how often do you really want to eat
something?', `If food looks, smells or tastes good,
how often do you eat more of it than usual?', `If
you have got something delicious how often do you
want to eat it straight away?', `If you see other
people eating, how often do you eat more of it than
usual'. A higher score re¯ected greater levels of
external motivation (children's a = 0.77, parent's
a = 0.69).
Body dissatisfaction
This was measured using a shortened Body
Satisfaction Questionnaire (Cooper et al., 1987).
Ten items were rated using a ®ve-point Likert scale
(never, not very often, sometimes, very often,
always), e.g. `Have you ever felt unhappy about
your body?', `How often do you refuse food
because you are worried about your weight?', `Has
eating sweets or cakes ever made you feel fat',
`Have you been afraid of becoming fat (or fatter)?
A higher score re¯ected greater body dissatisfac-
tion (range 1±5) (children's a = 0.81, parent's a =
0.87).
Body difference
Using body silhouettes of adult and children
(Stunkard et al., 1986) participants were asked to
circle one of the nine ®gures they felt closest to
their own size and then rate the ®gure they would
most like to look like. The discrepancy between the
two ®gures was scored. A more positive score
re¯ected a desire to be fatter and a more negative
score re¯ected a desire to be thinner.
 Children's diets

Additional parental items
Control
This assessed two aspects of control and food.
Items were rated on a ®ve-point Likert scale and
summated to create a total score (range 1±5).
Control over their child's diet.
Examples of items include: `How often are you
®rm about what your child should eat?', `How
often do you allow your child a free choice of what
to eat?', `How often are you ®rm about when your
median splits on the parent's ratings of control. The
children's reported snack food intake, eating
motivations and body dissatisfaction were then
assessed as to whether their parents showed high or
low control over their child's diet and high or low
use of diet to control their child's behaviour as a
means to test the control theory of parental
in¯uence. Analysis used independent t-tests and
Levene's test for homogeneity of variance.

Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016

child should eat?', `How often do you allow your Results
child to eat between meals?'. A higher score
re¯ected a greater degree of control placed on the
child's food intake by the parent (eight items, a = Pro®le characteristics
0.67). Participant's pro®le characteristics are shown in
Table I. There were 112 pairs of parents and
Control over their child's behaviour using
children. Children's ages ranged from 9 to 13;
food
adults from 23 to 53. The majority of the parents
Examples of items include: `How often do you were female, but there was almost an equal split
treat your child with food for good behaviour?', `If of boys and girls. The majority of parents were
your child is unhappy how often do you use food to white and described themselves as lower middle
cheer them up?', `Is a snack between meals class. Children's and adults BMI were within the
considered a treat for good behaviour?', `Do you healthy range.
use food as a way of distracting your child (e.g. if
they are preventing you from doing your chores)?'.
A higher score re¯ected a higher use of food to
control the child's behaviour (eight items, a =
0.81). Table I. Pro®le characteristics
Pro®le characteristics: Variable Parent (n = 112) Child (n = 112)
Parents were also asked to record their: Subjective
Age [years (range)] 40.8 (23±53) 11.23 (9±13)
class (working class, lower middle class, upper Sex
middle class, upper class), ethnicity (black, white, male 15 (12.4%) 49 (44%)
Asian, other), weight and height. female 106 (87.6%) 63 (56%)
Ethnicity
Data analysis black 1 (1%)
The results were analysed to (1) describe the white 92 (82%)
Asian 6 (6%)
participants' pro®le characteristics and their re- other 1 (1%)
ported snack food intake using descriptive statis- Subjective social class
tics, and (2) to assess the modelling theory of working 31 (32.3%)
parental in¯uence, parents and children's reported lower middle 44 (45.8%)
snack food intake, motivations for eating and their upper middle 21 (21.9%)
upper = 0 (0%)
body dissatisfaction were compared using Height (cm) 164.7 6 9.8 150.7 6 9.9
Spearman's correlation coef®cients. Finally, the Weight (kg) 67.7 6 12.9 44 6 12
pairs were then divided into groups based upon BMI 24.8 6 4.3 19.2 6 3.53

265
R. Brown and J. Ogden

Table II. Parents' (n = 112) and childrens' (n = 112) food intake (yesterday and in general)
Parent's Parent's Child's Child's Parent's rank Child's rank
yesterday general yesterday general

M SD M SD M SD M SD Yesterday General Yesterday General

Healthy food
grapes 0.2 1 1.6 0.8 0.4 1 1.8 1.1 10 9 10 8
oranges 0.4 0.6 1.9 1.1 0.6 0.9 1.7 1.0 6 6 8 10
peaches 0.1 0.3 1.2 0.9 0.1 0.4 0.9 1.0 13 13 13 13
yoghurt 0.4 0.6 2.1 1.2 0.6 0.7 2.3 1.2 5 5 7 7
toast 0.7 0.7 2.5 0.9 0.8 0.8 2.6 1.1 1 1 4 2
apples 0.6 0.6 2.3 1.0 0.7 0.8 2.5 1.1 4 3 6 4
Unhealthy food

Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016

chocolate 0.7 0.8 2.1 0.9 1.0 0.1 2.6 0.9 2 4 2 3
crisps 0.3 0.5 1.8 0.9 0.7 0.7 2.7 1.0 9 7 5 1
pastries 0.1 0.3 1.2 0.7 0.2 0.5 1.3 0.9 12 12 12 12
ice cream 0.2 0.4 1.3 0.7 0.3 0.6 1.7 0.9 11 1 11 11
sweets 0.3 0.5 1.7 0.9 1.1 1.1 2.3 1.0 7 8 1 6
cakes 0.3 0.5 1.6 0.7 0.6 0.9 1.8 1.1 8 10 8 9
biscuits 0.7 0.9 2.4 1.1 0.8 1.8 2.4 1.1 3 2 3 5

Parents' and children's reported snack
food intake
Table II describes the reported snack food intake of
parents and children. Children's most common
snack foods for `yesterday' were sweets, chocolate,
biscuits, toast and crisps, and for `in general' were
crisps, toast, chocolate, apples and biscuits. Many
of the foods being eaten by the children could be
considered `unhealthy'. Adults ate more healthily,
with three out of their ®ve most common foods
being categorized as `healthy'. The foods most
often eaten for both `yesterday' and `in general'
were toast, chocolate, biscuits, apples and yoghurt,
although ranked in a different order for these
different time points.
Comparison of parents and children's
snack food intake, eating motivations and
their body dissatisfaction
Parents and children were analysed to explore the
correlation between their snack food intake, eating
motivations and body dissatisfaction. The results
are shown in Table III. For snack food intake the
results showed a signi®cant correlation between
parent's and child's snack food intake in general,
and between parents and child's unhealthy snack
food eaten yesterday, indicating that a more
healthy or unhealthy diet shown by the parents
was associated with a similar diet by their child.
There was no association for healthy snack food
eaten yesterday. In terms of motivations, the results
showed a signi®cant correlation between parent
and child for internal motivations, but not for
external motivations, indicating that a child was
more likely to state that they ate for reasons such as
feeling upset or cross if their parent also stated
likewise. The results also showed a signi®cant
correlation between parent and child for both
measures of body dissatisfaction, indicating that a
higher dissatisfaction by the parent was re¯ected in
a higher level in the child.
Role of parent's level of control over their
child's diet
Parents who exercised high control over their
children's diets were compared with parents who
exercised lower control to see if control levels

266
 Children's diets

Table III. Comparisons between parents' and their childrens' food intake
Variable Parent (n = 112) Child (n = 112) Spearman's correlation

M SD M SD r P

Food intake
t healthy yesterday 1.93 1.44 0.54 0.39 0.15 0.119
t healthy generala 1.96 0.59 0.40 0.28 0.392 0.01
t unhealthy yesterdaya 0.351 0.27 0.651 0.41 0.234 0.01
t unhealthy generala 1.96 0.59 1.99 0.61 0.317 0.001
Eating motivations
t internal motivationa 1.10 0.67 1.10 0.77 0.352 0.01
t external motivation 1.93 0.85 2.16 0.85 0.17 0.069
Body dissatisfaction

Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016

t body dissatisfactiona 1.57 0.74 1.1 0.71 0.22 0.01
t body differencea ±1.6 1.14 ±0.43 0.89 0.195 0.03
aSigni®cant correlation between parent and child.

Table IV. Impact of parent's control over diet on children's food intake, eating motivations and body dissatisfaction

Variable Low control (n = 64) High control (n = 56) t P CI

M SD M SD

Food intake
healthy fooda yesterday 0.4645 0.3417 0.6161 0.483 ±2.067 0.04 ±0.2629 to ± 0.006
unhealthy fooda yesterday 0.5500 0.3377 0.8010 0.4747 ±3.299 0.001 ±0.4018 to ±0.1003
healthy food general 2.0054 0.5921 1.9851 0.6767 0.173 0.863 ±0.2111 to 0.2516
unhealthy food general 2.0468 0.4995 2.2041 0.5842 ±1.569 0.119 ±0.3558 to 0.041
Eating motivations
internal motivation 1.0742 0.7672 1.2054 0.8217 ±0.904 0.368 ±0.4185 to 0.1562
external motivation 1.9883 0.7604 2.2593 0.9391 ±1.732 0.086 ±0.5809 to 0.039
Body dissatisfaction
body dissatisfaction 1.1063 0.6841 1.1164 0.7702 ±0.75 0.941 ±0.2752 to 0.2552
body difference ±0.4762 0.8203 ±0.3571 0.9987 ±0.713 0.477 ±0.4495 to 0.2114
aSigni®cant main effect of group.

in¯uenced their child's snack intake, motivations
for eating and body dissatisfaction. The results are
shown in Table IV. The results showed no effect of
parental control over diet on snack food intake in
general, eating motivations or body dissatisfaction.
However, those children whose parents reported
higher levels of control over their children's diet
reported eating more of both the unhealthy and
healthy snack foods yesterday, indicating that
attempts to restrict a child's food intake may be
paradoxically associated with its increase.
Role of parent's level of control over their
child's behaviour using food
Parents who exercised high control over their
child's behaviour using food were compared with
parents who exercised lower control to see if
control levels in¯uenced their children's snack
food intake, motivations for eating and body
dissatisfaction. The results are shown in Table V.
No differences were found between the two groups
for snack food intake, eating motivations or body

267
R. Brown and J. Ogden

Table V. The impact of parent's use of diet to control the child's behaviour on children's food intake, eating motivations and
body dissatisfaction
Variable Low control (n = 66) High control (n = 51) t P CI

M SD M SD

Food intake
healthy food yesterday 0.531 0.4092 0.6088 0.3961 ±1.123 0.264 ±2.371 to 0.065
unhealthy food yesterday 0.6585 0.3632 0.6822 0.4985 ±0.293 0.770 ±0.1844 to 0.1369
healthy food general 1.9949 0.6384 1.9932 0.6217 0.015 0.988 ±0.2320 to 0.2355
unhealthy food general 2.0593 0.5433 2.1603 0.5238 ±0.988 0.320 ±0.3016 to 0.0995
Eating motivations
internal motivation 1.0227 0.767 1.2500 0.7794 ±1.567 0.12 ±0.5146 to 0.060
external motivation 2.0731 0.8049 2.1750 0.8440 ±0.659 0.511 ±0.4083 to 0.2045

Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016

Body dissatisfaction
body dissatisfactiona 1.0094 0.7449 1.3275 0.6774 ±2.367 0.02 ±0.5843 to ±0.0519
body difference ±0.3788 0.9075 ±0.3788 0.9075 0.768 0.444 ±0.2069 to 0.4689
aSigni®cant main effect of group.

difference. However, those children whose parents
reported a greater use of food to control their
child's behaviour showed higher levels of body
dissatisfaction.
Discussion
The present study aimed to explore the ways in
which parents effect their child's eating attitudes
and eating behaviour, and to test both the model-
ling and control and control theories of parental
in¯uence. There are some problems with the study,
however, which need to be addressed. First, many
children did not consent to take part in the study.
Because consent was needed to opt into the study
rather than to opt out, it is possible that some
parents did not receive the consent form and were
not told about the study. Non-consent may there-
fore re¯ect the child's forgetfulness rather than an
objection to a study on eating behaviour. However,
it is also possible that those who did not consent
were different to those who did in terms of eating
attitudes and food intake. It is not possible to
estimate the impact of this on the results as eating
control and consent could be related in either
direction. Therefore, care must be taken in
generalizing from the results of this study to all
children in general. Second, the measure of food
intake focused only on snack foods rather than
providing a comprehensive description of all
aspects of the children's diets. In addition, the
measure relied upon self-report which was not
supported by any objective assessment. However,
all measures of food intake are problematic.
Researcher observation can change food intake,
laboratory assessments offer an unnatural environ-
ment, and diary measures cause self-monitoring
and either increase or decrease eating. Further,
fully comprehensive food checklists can yield data
which is unmanageable and unsynthesized. The
measure used in the present study was designed to
be simple and short so that it could be understood
by both parents and children. It was also designed
to be focused on a child's consumption of snack
foods which are often at the centre of eating-related
negotiations between the parent and child. The
limitations of the measure are acknowledged, but it
is believed that it provides some insights into the
impact of modelling and control.
The results indicated that both parents' and
children's diets consisted of many unhealthy snack
foods such as crisps, chocolate and biscuits,
con®rming previous ®ndings from larger-scale
surveys [e.g. (Butriss, 1995; Nicklas, 1995;
Wardle, 1995)]. The results also indicated a strong
association between a parent's and their child's

268

snack food intake for all snacks in general and
unhealthy snacks eaten yesterday. This provides
support for the modelling theory of parental
in¯uence and indicates that children's diets are
effected by the types of food eaten by their parents
[e.g. (Klesges et al., 1991; Olivera et al., 1992;
Wardle, 1995)]. Modelling also appeared to have a
role in the transmission of eating-related attitudes,
with the results showing associations between
parents' and their childrens' internal motivations
and body dissatisfaction. This re¯ects previous
research which has reported a correspondence
between mothers' and daughters' degree of weight
concern (Hall and Brown, 1982; Hill et al., 1990;
Steiger et al., 1994). The results from the present
study therefore support a modelling theory of
parental in¯uence, and indicate that parents' eating
behaviours and attitudes closely correspond to
those of their children.
The present study also explored the role of
control. This was ®rst assessed in terms of parental
attempts to control their child's diet, and the results
showed that children whose parents reported
greater attempts to restrict their child's food intake
indicated eating more of both the healthy and
unhealthy foods. These parents may have been
imposing such control because their child had a
pre-existing tendency to overeat. However, in line
with previous studies of parental control (Birch,
1999; Fisher and Birch, 1999), it is also possible
that parentally enforced food restriction has the
paradoxical effect of triggering overeating in
children. Such an impact is in accordance with
experimental studies of children's diets (Fisher and
Birch, 1999), and also ®nds re¯ection in studies of
dietary restraint and the impact of self-imposed
food restriction on eating behaviour [e.g. (Herman
and Mack, 1975; Ogden, 2003)].
The role of control was also explored in terms of
the use of food to modify behaviour. The results
showed that such parental control had no impact
upon the child's diet, which is in contrast to
previous research [e.g. (Birch et al., 1980, 1982;
Newman and Taylor, 1992)]. However, those
children whose parents reported a greater use of
food as a tool for behavioural modi®cation
Children's diets
reported higher levels of body dissatisfaction.
Food is embedded with a complex set of meanings
removed from hunger and satiety (Ogden, 2003). It
is possible that using food to change behaviour
detaches food further from its role in satiating
hunger and promotes a more problematic relation-
ship with eating. The body dissatisfaction reported
in the present study may be a re¯ection of such a
relationship.
In summary, previous research has described
theories concerned with both modelling and con-
trol. The results from the present study offer
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
support for both these theories in pairs of parents
and children. In particular, modelling was found to
have a clear in¯uence on how children both think
and behave around food, with consistent associ-
ations found between parent's and children's
eating behaviours and attitudes. Parental control
was also found to exert an impact. Whilst control
over diet, however, in¯uenced the child's food
intake and not their attitudes, using food to control
behaviour was found to have the reverse effect.
Accordingly, whilst modelling may have a con-
sistent impact upon a child's diet and attitudes, the
impact of parental control depends upon whether
this control is focused directly at the child's diet or
indirectly uses diet as a means to modify other
aspects of the child's behaviour. To date, the
theories of modelling and control have been
developed as independent perspectives using dif-
ferent populations and different methodologies.
The results from the present study provide some
insights into the relative impact of these different
forms of parental in¯uence and indicate that a
positive parental role model may be a more
effective means to facilitate change than parental
attempts to impose control over their child's food
intake. Such results have direct implications for the
development of health education interventions.
Recent recommendations for the development of
intervention programs have called for the provision
of information to parents concerning meal content,
size and timing, and details about the potentially
damaging in¯uence of coercive feeding practices
(Birch and Davison, 2001). The results from the
present study indicate that in addition to simply
269
R. Brown and J. Ogden
educating parents what to feed their children, the
parent's diet itself should also be the focus on
change. If parents can be encouraged to recognize
that their own eating behaviour is the most
important source of information for their children
then maybe parents can be encouraged to adopt a
`do as I do not what I say' approach to their
children's food intake.
References
Bandura, A. (1977) Social Learning Theory. Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Berenson, G.S., Srinivasan, S.R., Bao, W., Newman, W.P., III,
Tracy, R.E. and Wattigney, W.A. (1998) Association
between multiple cardiovascular risk factors and
atherosclerosis in children and young adults. New England
Journal of Medicine, 338, 1650±1656.
Birch, L.L. (1980) Effects of peer models' food choices and
eating behaviors on preschoolers' food preferences. Child
Development, 51, 489±496.
Birch, L.L. (1999) Development of food preferences. Annual
Review of Nutrition, 19, 41±62.
Birch, L.L. and Davison, K.K. (2001) Family environmental
factors in¯uencing the developing behavioural controls of
food intake and childhood overweight. Pediatric Clinics of
North America, 48, 893±907.
Birch, L.L., Birch, D., Marlin, D. and Kramer, L. (1982)
Effects of instrumental eating on children's food preferences.
Appetite, 3, 125±134.
Birch, L.L., Marlin, D. and Rotter, J. (1984) Eating as the
`means' activity in a contingency: effects on young
children's food preference. Child Development, 55, 431±439.
Butriss, J. (1995) Nutrition in General Practice, 1st edn, vol. 2.
Promoting Health and Preventing Disease. Royal College of
General Practitioners, London.
Contento, I.R., Basch, C., Shea, S., Gutin, B., Zybert, P.,
Michela, J.L. and Rips, J. (1993) Relationship of mothers'
food choice criteria to food intake of pre-school children:
identi®cation of family subgroups. Health Education
Quarterly, 20, 243±259.
Cooper, P.J., Taylor, M.J., Cooper, Z. and Fairburn, C.G.
(1987) The development and validation of the Body Shape
Questionnaire. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 6,
485±494.
Currie, C., Todd, J. and Thompson, C. (1997) Health
Behaviours of Scottish School Children: Report 5:
Comparisons of National Patterns in 1990 and 1994.
Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change and
Health Education Board for Scotland, Edinburgh.
Fisher, J.O. and Birch, L.L. (1999) Restricting access to a
palatable food affects children's behavioral response, food
selection and intake. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
69, 1264±1272.
Gatherer, A., Par®t, J., Porter, E and Vessey, M. (1979) Is
270
Health Education Effective? An Overview of Evaluated
Studies. Health Education Council, London.
Hales, C.N., Barker, D.J.P., Clark, P.M.S., Cox, L.J., Fall, C.,
Osmond, C. and Winter, P.D. (1991) Fetal and infant growth
and impaired glucose tolerance at age 64. British Medical
Journal, 303, 1019±1022.
Hall, A. and Brown, L.B. (1982) A comparison of the attitudes
of young anorexia nervosa patients and non patients with
those of their mothers. British Journal of Psychology, 56,
39±48.
Herman, P. and Mack, D. (1975) Restrained and unrestrained
eating. Journal of Personality, 43, 646±660.
Hill, A.J., Weaver, C. and Blundell, J.E. (1990) Dieting
concerns of 10 year olds girls and their mothers. British
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 29, 346±348.
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
Kelder, S.H., Perry, C.L., Klepp, K.-I. and Lytle, L.L. (1994)
Longitudinal tracking of adolescent smoking, physical
activity and food choice behaviours. American Journal of
Public Health, 84, 1121±1126.
Klesges, R.C., Stein, R.J., Eck, L.H., Isbell, T.R. and Klesges,
L.M. (1991) Parental in¯uences on food selection in young
children and its relationships to childhood obesity. American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 53, 859±864.
Lepper, M., Sagotsky, G., Dafoe, J.L. and Greene, D. (1982)
Consequences of super¯uous social constraints: effects on
young children's social inferences and subsequent intrinsic
interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42,
51±65.
Lowe, C.F., Dowey, A. and Horne, P. (1998) Changing what
children eat. In Murcott, A. (ed.), The National's Diet: The
Social Science of Food Choice. Addison Wesley Longman,
London, pp. 57±80.
Moller, J.H., Taubert, K.A., Allen, H.D., Clark, E.B. and Lauer,
R.M. (1994) Cardiovascular health and disease in children:
current status. Circulation, 89, 923±930.
Newman, J. and Taylor, A. (1992) Effect of a means-end
contingency on young children's food preferences. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 64, 200±16.
Nicklas, T.A. (1995) Dietary studies of children and
young adults (1973±1988): the Bogalusa heart study.
American Journal of Medical Science, 310(Suppl. 1),
S101±S108.
Ogden, J. (2003) The Psychology of Eating: From Healthy to
Unhealthy Behaviour. Blackwell, Oxford.
Olivera, S.A., Ellison, R.C., Moore, L.L., Gillman, M.W.,
Garrahie, E.J. and Singer, M.R. (1992) Parent±child
relationships in nutrient intake: the Framingham
Children's Study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
56, 593±598.
Resnicow, K., Davis-Hearn, M., Smith, M., Baranowski, T.,
Lin, L.S., Baranowski, J., Doyle, C. and Wang, D.T. (1997)
Social cognitive predictors of fruit and vegetable intake in
children. Health Psychology, 16, 272±276.
Steiger, H., Stotland, S., Ghadirian, A.M. and Whitehead, V.
(1994) Controlled study of eating concerns and
psychopathological traits in relative of eating disorders
probands: do familial traits exist? International Journal of
Eating Disorders, 18, 107±118.
Steptoe, A., Pollard, T.M. and Wardle, J. (1995) Develop-
ment of a measure of the motives underlying the selection

of food: the food choice questionnaire. Appetite, 25,
267±284.
Stunkard, A.J., Stinnett, J.L. and Smoller, J.W. (1986)
Psychological and social aspects of the surgical treatment
of obesity. American Journal of Psychiatry, 143, 417±429.
Van Strien, T., Frijters, J.E.R., Bergers, G.P.A. and Defares,
P.B. (1986) The Dutch eating behaviour questionnaire for
Children's diets
assessment of restrained, emotional and external eating
behaviour. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 5,
747±755.
Wardle, J. (1995) Parental in¯uences on children's diets.
Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 54, 747±758.
Received on December 20, 2002; accepted on May 7, 2003
Downloaded from http://her.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 15, 2016
271