Co-creating healthful eating behaviors with very young children: The impact of information overload on primary caregivers

ABSTRACT

Primary caregivers of very young children are subject to excessive and often disparate information regarding the instilling of healthful eating behaviors. Our study focuses on the integration of the operant resources of primary caregivers (i.e., their knowledge and modeling skills) and that of their very young children (i.e., their self-regulation of energy intake and food preferences) to co-create healthful eating behaviors as a measure to curb overweight and obesity in adulthood. Our two-stage qualitative study makes original contributions demonstrating that primary caregivers’ efforts to co-create healthful eating behaviors with their very young children are adversely affected by information overload.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-creation
• healthful eating behaviors
• obesity
• very young children