Mother's Nutrition Knowledge and Children's Dietary Intakes

Abstract

This article uses U.S. food consumption data to examine the effect of maternal nutrition knowledge on the dietary intakes of children between two and seventeen years of age. Results show that maternal knowledge influences children's diets and that such influence decreases as children grow older. Nutrition knowledge acts as a pathway through which maternal education influences children's diets. This finding supports the hypothesis that education affects health‐related choices by raising the allocative efficiency of health input use. The results suggest that nutrition education may be more effective if targeted both toward mothers with young children and directly toward school‐age children.