Are Family Routines Modifiable Determinants of Preschool Children’s Eating, Dietary Intake, and Growth? A Review of Intervention Studies

Children’s eating behaviors are critical determinants of their dietary intake and, hence, childhood growth. Nutritional interventions among families with young children are focused on parents as agents of change, with interventions increasingly targeting family routines as drivers of children’s eating and health outcomes. This review describes studies that have acted on family routines in the context of preschoolers’ eating and growth, summarizes their findings, and discusses the limitations of current approaches to studying family routines and the implications for future research.

We found that food availability and parental offering of foods have been modified by several interventions and linked to positive changes in child outcomes. Parent interventions have had success in reducing controlling feeding practices and improving self-efficacy related to child feeding, but these have not been associated with long-term change in child outcomes.

We conclude that opportunities exist to strengthen the definition, operationalization, and measurement of family routine variables. Improvements in fidelity and process evaluation measures will be important for more efficacious intervention development and dissemination.