March Hot Topic: The Family Connection to Good Nutrition
and Raising Healthy Children

This month's Hot Topic focuses on National Nutrition Month and draws attention to the critical role parents play in establishing lifelong patterns for good nutrition. Here are some of the many resources available through CYFERnet aimed at helping parent and family educators and parents themselves understand the importance of family meals and the inverse relationship between families eating together and childhood obesity.

Busy Families and Mealtime/Las Comidas en Familia
This fact sheet explores the value of mealtimes to the family unit and offers suggestions for making the most of this time spent together. (English and Spanish)

Childhood and Adolescent Obesity in America: What’s a Parent to Do?
This fact sheet is aimed at parents and provides information about obesity and strategies for dealing with it in children and adolescents.

Do as I Do: Parents as Nutritional Role Models
This fact sheet discusses how parents can become role models for their children by eating well and providing nutritious foods for the family.

Childhood Overweight and the Relationship between Parent Behaviors, Parenting Style, and Family Functioning
This article discusses the relationship between parent behaviors, parenting style, and how a family functions with respect to the development of childhood overweight. Parents can influence a child's weight through specific feeding and activity practices and perhaps more broadly through their parenting style and management of family functioning.

Preventing Childhood Obesity Through Healthy Family Meals
Listen to this recording from the Family Album Radio for tips on family meals and preventing childhood obesity. “Family Album” is a co-production of the University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and WUFT-FM.

Preventing Childhood Obesity Through Physical Activity
Listen to this recording from the Family Album Radio for tips on getting children moving to avoid becoming obese.  A co-production of the University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and WUFT-FM.

Adolescent Nutrition and Exercise Behavior: A Preliminary Investigation into the Role of Parental Communication Quality
This paper addresses an issue that has received little attention: the role that parents play in shaping children’s nutrition and exercise beliefs and behaviors. Of particular interest is the influence of parental style and the quality of parent-child communication upon children’s nutrition and exercise beliefs and behaviors.

Spending Time with Your Children
This Ohio State University fact sheet, aimed at parents, provides suggestions for spending "quality" time with the family. It focuses on how the many informal situations in daily life provide occasions for learning important life lessons and building important skills.

Getting Your Family to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables
A newsletter specifically designed to give adults information to improve nutrition without increasing the amount of money spent on food. Also included in each newsletter is a healthy recipe, as well as a question-and-answer section for inquiries about healthy eating.

A Family Check-Up: A Web-based, Self-Assessment Program In Family Life, Financial Management, Nutrition, and Food Safety
This is an article about the “Family Check-Up,” a user-friendly, Web-based self-assessment tool, which provides immediate feedback.

Child Care Home: Appetites and Healthy Attitudes Toward Food
This fact sheet discusses children's appetites, ways to create a healthy attitude toward food, ways to reduce sugar intake, suggestions for appealing and nutritious snacks, saving money on food, and how to involve children in the kitchen.

For Other Hot Topics, check here.