Impact of Parents on Snacks Consumption among Primary School Children

[Objective]To understand the knowledge and attitude about snacks consumption among parents and their impacts on related behaviors in primary school children.[Methods]A total of 1446 adults having children in primary school were recruited by a cluster sampling strategy from Jing'an District,Shanghai.A self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted.Descriptive analysis,univariate analysis and multivariate linear regression were used in this study.[Results]The proportion of adults who didn't oppose to rewarding children with snacks,eating snacks instead of meals in dinner and having snacks within half an hour before or after dinner were 57.61%,42.19%and 11.00%,respectively.The results of the multivariate linear regression model suggested that the adults' knowledge and attitudes about snacks consumption were associated with their children's related behaviors,such as whether snacks could be used to encourage and reward their children or not,snacks advertised on TV could be taken at will and times of eating snacks a day,etc(P0.05).[Conclusion]The adults' knowledge and attitudes affect their children's related behaviors.It is necessary to enhance the education to adults in parenting on reasonably snack eating pattern.