Helping children eat healthier foods may begin with getting parents to do the same, research suggests

Most parents, educators and policymakers agree that children should eat healthy foods. However, our peer-reviewed paper suggests the strategy adults often use to achieve that can sometimes backfire. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix.

We, along with fellow marketing scholars Lingrui Zhou and Gavan Fitzsimons, conducted five experiments with over 3,800 parents as well as 10 in-depth interviews. We found that parents tend to choose unhealthy foods for themselves after choosing a healthy meal for their young children. This happens because parents said they are uncertain whether their…