Download or read book Describing and Predicting Parents' Daily Food and Beverage Offerings at Dinner from Their Stress and Children's Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic written by Jennifer Marie Barton and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Childhood obesity in the U.S. has increased threefold in the past several decades, such that nearly 19% of all children ages 2-19 are overweight or obese. During early childhood, children are learning what foods to eat but parents are the primary gatekeepers for food within the home. Parents' feeding practices regarding what and how much to feed their children, may be influenced by daily barriers they experience such as stress, however, the majority of research lacks the appropriate design to capture parents' daily experiences. The goal of this dissertation was to extend the literature on parents' daily stress and their feeding practices at dinner within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the aims of this dissertation were to examine variation in parents' daily food and beverage offerings, to determine whether variation in parents' food and beverage offerings is related to their daily stress, to determine whether child difficulty and child pickiness moderate the association between parents' food and beverage offerings and their stress, and to examine the temporal association of parents' stress and child difficulty with parents' food and beverage offerings. Ninety-nine parents (M [subscript age] = 32.90, SD [subscript age] = 5.60) of children ages 2 to 4 years were recruited from social media to complete an online survey and 10 daily diaries. On average, parents did not offer recommended foods and beverages on a daily basis and there was considerable variation within-subjects. Parents' daily stress was unrelated to their food and beverage offerings; however, child difficulty was associated with parents' vegetable, whole grain, and refined grain offerings. After accounting for the lagged predictors, lagged child difficulty was only associated protein offerings and the current day child difficulty main effects for vegetables, whole grains, and refined grains remained. Two interactions between current day and lagged child difficulty emerged for protein and refined grains offerings. Homemade meals and meal planning were particularly predictive of whether parents offered recommended foods and beverages. This dissertation provides a glimpse into the daily lives of parents and their children during the COVID-19 pandemic and which daily predictors are most important for offering recommended foods and beverages