But preliminary results of a new survey on family eating habits, attitudes and physical activity was released showing parents and kids are on the right track to making healthier choices, and pinpointing what work still needs to be done.
Following up on a similar survey from 2003, the American Dietetic Association Foundation's 2010 Family Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey studied 1,193 pairs of children (ages 8 to 17) and their parents*, revealing significant positive changes in eating patterns, meal and snack purchases and family patterns that are related to healthier weights in children.
"Families are making progress towards improving the quality of their diets, but there is still much work to be done to ensure that children and families are getting the adequate amounts of the right foods and nutrients," said registered dietitian Dr. Katie Brown, national education director for the ADA Foundation.
Brows cites the data showing many children know what they shouldn't eat, but only 25% of them, along with their parents, know what healthy foods they should eat.
"The good news is that parents are interested in meeting with a registered dietitian, who has the expertise essential to success and who can help them build upon what they already know about nutrition and apply it to their eating behaviors with skills and techniques from shopping and cooking to eating," Brown said.
Some of the survey's key findings were very positive.
Since the 2003 study, more families reported eating meals at home; 73% in 2010 versus 52% seven years ago.
When asked which food group to eat the least amount from, more than half of all the children and parents surveyed correctly identified the fats, oils and sweets as the food group.
58% of Caucasian children, 41% of African-American children and 58% of Hispanic children said they eat breakfast every morning.
While still not enough, the 2010 survey revealed a 93% increase in the last seven years in the number of children being physically active with their parents three or more days a week.
Parents want advice
Both parents and children expressed interest in meeting with registered dietitians; parents wanted advice on preparing healthy meals, what foods their children should be eating more often, reading food labels, and how food affects health; children wanted advice on meal preparation and how food effects their health.
The 2010 survey revealed both parents and children still have some things to work on when it comes to healthy eating habits.
Less than 25% of parents and their children correctly identified grains as the food group from which the most servings should be consumed daily. The most common answer among Caucasian parents and kids and African-American parents and kids, and Hispanic parents, while 22.8% of Hispanic children selected meats, fish, poultry and beans (22.8 percent).
Instead of simply focusing on their meal, children said they ate while doing other activities like homework, watching television, playing computer games and talking on the phone. About one-fourth of children eat while watching TV and a similar number said they eat after dinner all or most of the time.
Similar to 2003, most family activities are sedentary -- watching TV or movies or playing video games. Engaging in these activities three or more days weekly is 64.4% of families in 2010, up from 57.2% of families in 2003.
More active
Kids say they want to be more active. The majority of them reported they would be more physically active if fun activities were offered before school (59 to 79%), during class (80 to 89&) or after school (77 to 92&). Further, kids said they would be more active if there were safe places to play in their neighborhood (66 to 86%) and if their peers wanted to do physical activity (87 to 89%).
The preliminary findings of the American Dietetic Association Foundation's 2010 Family Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey were released Tuesday, November 9 at ADA's Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo in Boston.
In 2010, a total of 1,193 parent and child pairs were surveyed within three population samples: 754 pairs of children and parents who are representative of the U.S. population, 209 African-American pairs and 230 Hispanic pairs. For race comparisons, a random sampling of 420 Caucasian child-parent pairs was taken from the general population sample.
