Evidence-Based Recommendations and Best Practices for Promoting Healthy Eating Behaviors in Children 2 to 8 Years
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: October 2021
This report describes the findings and recommendations of a panel of experts on encouraging young children to eat healthily.
Primary Takeaways
The expert panel recommends (1) providing structure and autonomy so children can learn about and have positive experiences with new foods, and (2) providing structure and autonomy so children can learn to make healthy food choices and eat moderately. The experts recommend giving children many opportunities to try new foods, modeling enjoying trying new things, including children in preparing food, and offering food in positive ways. They also recommend family meals, child-sized portions, limiting sugary drinks and snacks, limiting eating out, and encouraging kids to eat fruits and vegetables and drink water.
Overview and Objectives
Healthy Eating and Research recognized that there are few guidelines for how to feed young children and encourage healthy eating habits from a young age. They wanted to bring experts together to review the evidence about best practices for promoting healthy eating behaviors among young children. They also wanted to recommend steps families, caregivers, and policymakers can take.
Hypothesis or Approach
Healthy Eating and Research convened a panel of 15 experts in nutrition, pediatrics, psychology, child development, family medicine, and sociology. The group met virtually once a month from February 2020 to March 2021. Together, they synthesized findings of narrative and systematic reviews and developed consensus recommendations.
How This Influences Change
The findings of this report can help parents, caregivers, and policymakers better promote healthy eating among young children, as well as informing future research that can fill in the gaps in what we know.
Research: Go Deeper
Childhood is a period of tremendous cognitive, socio-emotional, and physical development. Nutrition plays a vital role in growth, development, and overall health, as well as in the prevention of obesity and other lifelong, diet-related chronic diseases. Childhood is also recognized as a critical period for the development of eating behaviors and habits that reflect a complex interplay of biological predispositions for taste preferences and early experiences and learning in diverse environments, which ultimately serve as a child’s general orientation to eating.
Data from the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicate that U.S. children 2 to 5 years of age consume approximately 75 percent of daily energy intake at home highlighting the important role of parents in shaping the early development of children’s eating behaviors. However, approximately 60 percent of U.S. children under the age of 5 are in a non-parental childcare arrangement. Further, by the time children reach school age, somewhere between 33 and 38 percent of daily energy intake occurs outside the home. These trends underscore that children’s eating occurs and is shaped by caregiving and food environments in a variety of settings, including home, childcare, school, and other places where children spend a large portion of their time and eating occurs such as homes of relatives or friends.
This report presents evidence-based recommendations for promoting healthy eating behaviors in children aged 2 to 8. Recommendations reflect expert consensus on current scientific knowledge in two broad areas: (1) promoting acceptance of healthful foods; and (2) promoting healthy appetites and growth. Research on the development of children’s eating behaviors is relatively new, but rapidly evolving. The recommendations in this report were developed through a review of scientific research and consensus of a panel of national experts with diverse expertise in nutrition, pediatrics, psychology, child development, and sociology.
Recommendations reflect extensive basic and applied research expertise of panel members on topics including children’s food preferences and eating behaviors, parenting styles, feeding styles, food parenting practices, settings where children receive care, child obesity, and cultural and socioeconomic influences.
Healthy Eating Research, October 2021
Figure 1. Socioecological Model of Children's Weight and Dietary Intake
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people:
- Fisher J
- Lumeng J
- Smethers A
- Lott M
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