COLLEGE STATION, Texas, June 10 (UPI) -- A U.S. study indicates fathers are more likely than mothers to influence what and where a child eats, researchers say.
Dr. Alex McIntosh, an AgriLife Research sociologist at Texas A&M, says lenient fathers allowing children more trips to fast-food restaurants has been linked to obesity in children.
"Dads who think that dinner time is a special family time certainly do not see a fast-food restaurant as an appropriate place for that special family time, so this means that his kids are spending less time in those places," McIntosh says in a statement. "Dads who have no trouble eating food in a fast-food restaurant are going to be more likely to have kids who do so."
The researchers had children write down in a diary what they ate and whether it was at home or outside the home.
The study, published in The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, found it was fathers' time spent at fast-food restaurants -- not mothers' time spent there -- that was associated with kids' time spent in a fast-food place.
The only instances of mothers being lax on the use of fast-food are those who are neglectful and those who are highly committed to their work, McIntosh says.
"Traditionally academics have blamed mothers for everything that goes wrong with children, especially when it comes to food, but I think it's pretty clear that fathers have a substantial influence over what children are eating," he says.
