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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1428852

A Report Card Assessment of the Prevalence of Healthy Eating among Preschool-Aged Children: A Cross-Cultural Study across Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US

Provisionally accepted
  • Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: This study aimed to initially adopt an International Healthy Eating Report Card for Preschool-aged Children to assess the prevalence of healthy eating behaviours and favourable family home food environments (FHFEs) among preschool-aged children in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US. We also examined which cultural contexts would exhibit significant differences in the report card scores among the four cultural contexts.: In this cross-cultural study, 2059 parent-child dyads, with approximately 500 dyads in each cultural context, were recruited. The parents were asked to complete the validated International Healthy Eating Report Card Scale to assess the dimensions of the Report Card (i.e., Indicator of Children's Eating Behaviours: (1) Children's Dietary Patterns and (2) Children's Mealtime Behaviours, and Indicator of FHFEs: (3) Parental Food Choices and Preparation, (4) Home Healthier Food Availability and Accessibility and (5) Family Mealtime Environments). Each indicator received a letter grade (i.e., A (≥ 80%) = excellent, B (60-79%) = good, C (40%-59%) = fair, D (20%-39%) =poor, F (<20%) = very poor and including the plus (+) and minus (-) signs) to represent the proportion of participants who could meet the predefined benchmarks. We also employed ANCOVA and Bonferroni's post-hoc test to examine the differences in the report card scores between the four cultural contexts. A significance level was set at p < .05.The average overall report card grade across the four cultural contexts was "B-" (Good), ranging from "C+" (Singapore and the US) to "B-" (Australia and Hong Kong). The average grade for Children's Eating Behaviours was classified as Fair ("C-"), while the average grade for FHFEs was classified as Good ("B+") for all cultural contexts. A comparison of the overall report card scores revealed that Australia exhibited a significantly higher report card score than Singapore and the US, while Hong Kong achieved a significantly higher score than Singapore.The International Healthy Eating Report Card provided an overview of the prevalence of healthy eating in different cultural contexts. We believe that the International Healthy Eating Report Card may offer new perspectives on interventions for fostering healthy eating in young children.

    Keywords: healthy eating, Prevalence, Report card, eating behaviours, family home food environment, preschool-aged children, Obesity

    Received: 07 May 2024; Accepted: 12 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wan, Chung, Li, Xu and Chan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Derwin King Chung Chan, Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.