Parenting practices are associated with fruit and vegetable consumption in pre-school children.

High fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption has been associated with a lower prevalence of obesity, type 2 diabetes and CHD in adults(1). In children, higher vegetable(2) and F&V consumption(3) were associated with lower BMI. However, most US children and adults are not eating the recommended amount of F&V(4). US pre-school children consumed approximately 80% of the recommended daily fruit servings, but only 25% of the recommended daily vegetable servings(5). Identifying strategies to promote F&V consumption in young children is critical to promoting healthy nutrition and potentially lowering their risk of obesity and chronic diseases. Parents likely influence children’s behaviour, including F&V consumption, in many ways. General parenting style has been defined as parents’ attitudes about childrearing combined with the emotional climate created by the parents through which parental practices are expressed (6). Parenting style specific to the feeding context has been termed ‘feeding style’(7). Both general parenting style and its derivative, parental feeding style, have been related to children’s F&V consumption(7–9) and weight status(10). For example, pre-school children whose parents used an authoritative feeding style consumed more vegetables than children whose parents used an authoritarian feeding style(9). Parenting style has been differentiated from parenting practices, which are defined as specific parental actions or behaviours designed to influence children’s behaviour (6). Since it may be difficult to change parenting or feeding styles, targeting food parenting practices may offer more promise for future obesity prevention programmes. However, most of this literature has been cross-sectional and focused on counterproductive parental feeding practices; for example, parental control and pressure to eat were both negatively associated with children’s F&V consumption(11,12). Greater understanding of food parenting practices that promote F&V consumption is needed. In addition, parents likely do not use only one type of food parenting practice when trying to influence their children’s intake. Therefore it is important to investigate how different types of parenting practices work in combination in promoting F&V consumption in young children. Previous research on food parenting(13–15) and feeding styles(7–9) has utilized primarily an etic research method. The etic and emic approaches to research have been described in anthropology and psychology, and refer to the perspective taken to better understand cultures or behaviours(16–18). An etic approach relies upon an out-sider’s perspective and in food-related parenting would be exemplified by having the investigator impose theory-or expert-based constructs to characterize and categorize feeding styles and food parenting practices. Alternatively, an emic approach(16–18) studies groups from within and allows the subjects (or insiders) to describe these phenomena from their own point of view. In food-related parenting, an emic approach would therefore involve parents self-identifying and categorizing parenting practices for promoting FV (ii) describe the clusters based on parent and child characteristics; and (iii) relate children’s F&V consumption with parent cluster membership.