Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“Great Job Cleaning Your Plate Today!” Determinants Of Child-Care Providers’ Use Of Controlling Feeding Practices: An Exploratory Examination, Dipti A. Dev, Brent A. Mcbride, Katherine E. Speirs, Kimberly A. Blitch, Natalie A. Williams

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Background National early childhood obesity prevention policies recommend that child-care providers avoid controlling feeding practices (CFP) (e.g., pressure-to-eat, food as reward, and praising children for cleaning their plates) with children to prevent unhealthy child eating behaviors and childhood obesity. However, evidence suggests that providers frequently use CFP during mealtimes.

Objective Using the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (2011) benchmarks for nutrition in child care as a framework, researchers assessed child-care providers’ perspectives regarding their use of mealtime CFP with young children (aged 2 to 5 years).

Design Using a qualitative design, individual, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with providers until …