Parents' perspectives and roles in influencing 10-12-year-old children's fruit and vegetable consumption: a qualitative study in Sweden.

BACKGROUND

Parents play a central role in shaping children's health behaviours and dietary habits. Previous research has provided insight into parents' feeding practices, especially regarding preschoolers. Less is known about how parents of 10-12-year-old children, whose fruit and vegetable (F&V) intake is particularly low relative to recommendations, perceive F&V and translate their intentions regarding F&V into everyday practices. This study explored parents' perspectives on F&V, their reasons for serving them, and their experiences of influencing their children's intake.

METHODS

Fifteen parents of 10-12-year-old children (12 mothers, three fathers) were purposively recruited from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in southern Sweden and participated in individual interviews. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis.

RESULTS

Parents perceived F&V as beneficial, primarily due to vitamin content and immediate health effects. However, most were unfamiliar with recommendations and often considered relatively small amounts sufficient. Vegetables were primarily served at dinner, with less attention to other eating occasions, which may reduce opportunities to meet the recommended daily intake. Parents described a range of strategies to influence their children's consumption, including mixing F&V into other foods, accommodating preferences, encouragement, and providing rules or benchmarks (e.g. 'Always two colours on the plate'). Some parents expressed concerns about sugar content, occasionally leading to unnecessary restriction of F&V. The analysis generated five themes regarding parents' knowledge and beliefs, sources of information, preferences and resources, agency, and intentions. In addition, four parental roles were conceptualised to illustrate patterns in the intentions and strategies the parents used when influencing their 10-12-year-old children's F&V consumption-The Enforcer, The Accommodator, The Teacher, and The Role Model-ranging from direct influence on consumption to more indirect and future-oriented approaches.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest potential mismatches between the participants' perceptions of F&V, including their understanding of amounts, health benefits, and some facilitating feeding practices, and public health messages such as recommendations. More accessible guidance on why, but also on how, how much, and how often to serve F&V may support parents similar to the participants in the present study in promoting their children's consumption.