Abstract

This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of mothers' attitudes on preparing baby foods for their children's food habits and development. The subjects were allocated to 419 preschool children, aged 3 - 5 years. This study surveyed by questionnaire, which was answered by the children's mothers. Subjects were classified by two groups, active and passive, based on their mothers' weaning attitudes. In the active group, mothers tried to make a variety of foods for preparing the baby foods, whereas mothers in the passive group didn't try to make it too much. Family income was higher in the active group and the subjects' mothers had more jobs than those in the passive group, whereas their parent's education levels showed no differences. According to Rohrer index, 2.6% of subjects were obese in the active group, whereas 7.7% in the passive group. These data were shown significantly different between the groups. There were no differences in mother's food habits and breast-feeding versus formula feeding between the two groups. However, children's food habits were shown statistically different between the two groups. Higher regularity of meals, higher frequencies of snacks at home, higher frequencies of fruit, corn, sweet potato as a snacks and less instant foods were revealed in the active group more than in the passive group. The major problem of children's food habits was an unbalanced diet (52.7%) and the major reasons for unbalanced diet were the taste (58.7%) and the texture (23.2%). The active group used more fruits and vegetables than the passive group. Also there were significant differences to solve problems of children's unbalanced diets. In the positive group, 14.4% of mothers tried to develop new cooking methods for solving the problem of an unbalanced diet, but 8.2% did in the passive group. Furthermore, 2.3% of mothers in the positive group removed unpleasant items of the food, whereas 6.9% did in the passive. The average nutritional knowledge scores on a 10 scale were 7.2 and 6.9 in active and passive groups, respectively, and they were statistically different. Mothers among the active group explained the knowledge for food and nutrition to their children more than those in the passive group. These results suggest that mothers' attitudes for baby food are an important factor for forming their children's food habits. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a nutritional education program, materials and new recipes for a variety of baby foods to mothers.