My favorite breakfast is coffee with anything sweet, but this morning I had Special K and strawberries. My 15-year-old daughter, headed for 11th grade orientation, was too focused on getting her hair to look just right to eat breakfast. I realized she’d be more likely to down something if I stopped talking about studies that say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and just pulled up a chair.
So I poured us each a bowl, got out the skim milk, and watched her smile at the too-unusual sight of us eating breakfast together.
Turns out my morning insight was something researchers already know. A study of more than 1,300 families published recently in Preventive Medicine found that when parents increased their own consumption of fruits and vegetables, so did their preschoolers.
"We know that parents have a tremendous influence over how many fruits and vegetables their children eat," says Debra Haire-Joshu, lead author on the study and a professor at Saint Louis University School of Public Health in St. Louis.
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