PARENTAL NUTRITION MODEL AND CHILDREN'S NUTRITIONAL BEHAVIOURS

BACKGROUND Human beings need nutrition to maintain their vitality and health. Today's life has affected and mostly disturbed people's dietary habits, causing various anomalies and diseases in their bodies. So, humans need to reform their diet and nutrition. The best way to do this is to improve the child's nutritional habits. MATERIALS AND METHODS The present descriptive-correlational study was conducted on children aged 7 - 12 years in non-governmental schools in Tabriz in 2017. Out of each educational district of Tabriz, two segregated schools for boys and girls were selected, making up a total of ten schools and all stages of selecting schools and students were determined by random sampling. The research population includes the parents of those children studying in these schools who were selected through cluster sampling; required data was collected using questionnaires responded to by parents. RESULTS Findings showed that there is a logical and positive relationship between parental nutrition model and two components of the child nutritional behaviour including "accepting food" and "enjoying food." But the other two components, "food complaints" and "refusal to eat" turned out to be significantly lower than the average indicating a logical and inverse relationship. CONCLUSION Given the fact that the majority of the children are sheltered and brought up by the family as well as the role of parental nutritional model in following the best example for the children, parents can select the appropriate nutritional behaviours and create a proper nourishing pattern which reduces children's mistakes in food, increases their acceptance and satisfaction with food and ensures proper growth to guarantee health and vitality for the future of children.