Men’s preconception diet quality patterns predict supportive food parenting practices: evidence from a longitudinal cohort study

BACKGROUND: Food parenting practices play a vital role in shaping children's food intake, yet evidence linking fathers' earlier diet patterns to later parenting is limited. This study examined the association between fathers' diet quality patterns during their adolescence and food parenting practices during fatherhood. METHODS: Data were drawn from Fathers & Families (F&F), a father-based cohort that recruited participants from an ongoing cohort in the United States that has followed participants since adolescence. Participants (n = 584) reported their dietary intake during adolescence (ages 10-18) using a Youth/Adolescent Food Frequency Questionnaire across multiple survey waves (1996-2011), and reported their food parenting practices using an online survey completed in 2021-2022. Fathers' diet quality patterns during their adolescence were derived from Healthy Eating Index-2020 (HEI-2020) scores using sequence analysis and hierarchical clustering. Associations between these adolescent diet quality patterns and food parenting practices (coercive control, structure, autonomy support) were estimated with ordinal logistic regression, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates and family meal frequency measured during adolescence. RESULTS: Three diet quality patterns were identified in adolescence: Low HEI-2020 (50.0%), Declining HEI-2020 (36.5%), and Increasing HEI-2020 (13.5%). Compared to those with Low HEI-2020, fathers demonstrating Increasing HEI-2020 had higher odds of using supportive food parenting practices with their preschool-aged children including higher use of structure-based food parenting practices (OR = 1.93, 95%CI [1.18-3.18]) and lower use of coercive control-based food parenting practices (OR = 0.57, 95%CI [0.36-0.91]). CONCLUSIONS: Improving men's diet quality during adolescence may have enduring benefits, promoting not only healthier adult eating patterns but also more supportive food parenting practices as fathers.