Do parents eating habit affect children?

This information when I read gave me a shock, but was little surprising.

As experts suggested that parents eating habits don’t seem to influence their children’s food choices. The dietary intake between the parents and children is weak. A research made on this reveals that:

Parents who ate a healthier diet were three times more likely to have a healthy diet compared to those parents who did not have a very healthy diet.

Overall, the food intake of nearly 5,000 persons were considered out of which 1061 were fathers, 1230 mothers, 1370 sons and 1322 daughters. The researchers compared intake and assessed diet quality based on USDA (U.S. department of agriculture) healthy eating index score. A perfect score is 100 and index takes into account a person’s intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy products, meat, beans, oil, fat and sodium. The average score obtained was about 48 to 50. But the score of above 80 seems to be a good diet according to USDA. Only 10 per cent got a score greater than 80 according to USDA.

So what should parents do? They can talk about how they choose meat and how they decide which dairy foods to buy with the children. And also can help them to cook healthy foods too. Parents should eat healthier and encourage their children to follow similar habits.