The Parent's Plate Problem: How Good Intentions for Kids Lead to Poor Food Choices for Adults

Journal of Marketing Research Scholarly Insights are produced in partnership with the AMA Doctoral Students SIG – a shared interest network for Marketing PhD students across the world.

Picture this: A kids’ menu contains some healthy options, so a parent decides to order one for their child—perhaps grilled chicken bites with baby carrots. However, when it comes to the parent’s own order, they choose something less healthy, such as a cheeseburger with fries. They do this not because they necessarily want a burger themselves but out of concern that their child won’t like or eat their healthy meal, so the parent uses their own meal as a backup option. This common scenario reveals a complex dynamic in family dining that has significant implications for restaurants, policymakers, and public health.

A Journal of Marketing Research article dives deep into the dynamics of these parent–child consumption choices through a series of studies, including interviews, a field experiment at a nursery school, and lab experiments. When parents choose healthy options for their kids in settings where sharing is possible, they often make unhealthy choices for themselves. This isn’t simply a matter of parents rewarding themselves; rather, it reflects a deeper tension between present-focused concerns (“will my child eat enough?”) and future-focused concerns (“is my child learning healthy eating habits?”).

“When parents choose healthy options for their kids in settings where sharing is possible, they often make unhealthy choices for themselves.”

The research identifies a psychological process in which parents focus so heavily on their child’s needs that they view their own meal as an extension of their child’s plate, often leveraging it as an alternative option for their child. This behavior not only impacts immediate consumption but could also have longer-term implications related to the wellness of the parents and, in turn, the wellness of the family the as a whole, as well as the modeling of unhealthy habits for children—despite parents’ good intentions.

What Can Restaurants and Policymakers Do?

For restaurants and policymakers, these findings suggest the need for a more holistic approach to family dining. Simply adding healthy options to kids’ menus isn’t enough; the entire dining ecosystem needs attention. Restaurants might consider menu language that promotes future-focused thinking about family meals, developing marketing communications that help set boundaries around food sharing, and working on aligning perceptions of healthy and tasty food. Meanwhile, policymakers should look beyond simply mandating healthy children’s menu options to consider guidelines that address both children’s and adults’ choices, especially in settings where families eat together. Educational campaigns could help families prioritize future well-being over immediate concerns, thus addressing the psychological dynamics revealed in this research.

We had the privilege of speaking directly with two authors, Kelley Gullo Wight and Peggy Liu, to dive deeper into their fascinating study. Read on for their insights and behind-the-scenes stories:

Q: What initially inspired you to study the relationship between parents’ choices for their children and their subsequent choices for themselves? Can you share how the initial idea led to further studies and ultimately became the published article?

Dr. Wight: The initial inspiration came from personal observations during my first year of the PhD program. I got a cat and noticed an interesting pattern in my own behavior: I would go to the pet food store and spend a lot of time picking out the healthiest food. Afterward, I would go to the cupcake store next door and buy myself a cupcake. I started wondering, “What is happening? Why am I doing this?” This initial observation sparked broader research into how our initial choices for close others might affect our subsequent choices for ourselves.

Dr. Liu: At some point along the journey for this project, we expanded our study to consider a huge variety of relationships, such as siblings, competitive relationships, and friendships. However, what the JMR review team wanted us to do was, instead of covering every possible type of choice for others affecting choice for self, to think more about one specific type of context where it’s common to make choices for others and to figure out why there are influences between choices for others and choices for self in that context. By focusing on the parent–child relationship, we were able to develop a much stronger and more impactful paper.

Q: Were there any challenges in earlier studies, such as the field study conducted in the nursery school? How did you ultimately execute it?

Dr. Wight: The original version of the paper included a field study at a dog park. When the review team wanted us to focus specifically on parent–child relationships, we needed to find a replacement field study, which proved quite challenging during COVID.

Ultimately, we partnered with a nursery school. While we couldn’t directly observe parents and children eating because of COVID protocols, they allowed us to coordinate take-home meal orders for families. We are very grateful to the nursery school for their willingness to work with us. After the research was completed, we were able to give back to the community by conducting workshops about families with the parents, which was really great.

Q: Could greater literacy regarding sustainable and health-conscious food choices make a difference? What suggestions would you offer to parents based on your findings?

Dr. Wight: Focusing on sustainability and avoiding food waste could have a countereffect here: people might be more likely to pick a less healthy backup option to make sure all food is eaten. One thing that seems to be going on is that it may be valuable as a parent to be able to provide a wide variety of options that you have (as the parent) cleared as being healthy and to then let the child pick among them. This way, you’re still exerting control as the parent, and the child has a greater variety of healthy options to pick from, which might encourage healthier eating and help ensure that they pick the healthy options that they view as especially tasty.

Dr. Liu: I think most parents and adults know what’s healthy and unhealthy. Our research suggests that it is really important to emphasize that parents have a future focus (e.g., thinking about their child’s development of healthy habits for their future) instead of just a present focus (e.g., thinking about their child’s eating at that present moment). I think it’s also important to help people—both adults and children—understand that health and taste can be aligned. There’s some interesting research in nutrition that shows you have to try food many times before you can actually know if you like it.

Q: Based on your research, what adjustments would you suggest to restaurants to help promote healthier eating habits, particularly given that many kids’ meals today tend to be unhealthy? How could these insights be applied in public health initiatives?

Dr. Liu: While some companies and school cafeterias have tried to encourage providing children with healthier meals, we need to think about both short-term and long-term impacts. One key aspect would be to make health and taste feel more aligned for children. I think it’s important for children to develop actual enjoyment of these healthier options. Many parents know that it’s not good for their kids to eat unhealthy options frequently; to the extent that restaurants or companies could help children develop healthier habits, I think parents would be willing to eat [at these locations] more frequently.

Dr. Wight: The White House released a challenge in 2023 for restaurants and businesses to offer more healthy children’s options, and many companies signed up. Our research insights suggest that we can’t only focus on the healthy options we offer on the kids’ menu or how we advertise healthy options for kids. We have to think about how parents pick their own meals as well because what really matters is what’s available on the table.

Q: Given societal pressure, such as the ideal of a “perfect parent,” or when in a social event with other parents, will parents’ behavior change?

Dr. Wight: I think, in some ways it’s an empirical question—something that could be interesting to study. With these kinds of parental peer pressure situations, I see where it could result in parents being more likely to try to encourage their children to eat healthy, which exacerbates the concern about whether they will eat enough to be full (such that parents choose unhealthy backup options). However, in other ways, parents may also choose healthy for themselves, given their peer influence. Something else could happen too. When you’re sitting with your parent friend and want to hang out, maybe you want to settle your child as soon as possible and give them something unhealthy that you know they’ll eat without any protest. This depends on all kinds of factors, which adds another layer of social influence to this kind of social dynamic.

Q: Beyond food, do you think similar behaviors might arise in other caregiving areas, such as educational choices (e.g., extracurriculars) or financial decisions for children? Are there common threads across different contexts?)

Dr. Liu: I think one broad concept that ties all these areas together is that parents make sacrifices. As parents, you may sacrifice your time, money, and consumption preferences across these domains. However, some of our findings in this particular JMR paper are fairly specific to food in the sense that if you think about something like the problems of sharing food and the immediate concerns of the child’s hunger, I’m not sure how those concepts translate as easily to education choices. There are parents who drive themselves ragged, trying to drive their children all over town to every extracurricular, when really what might have been better for the child and the whole family’s well-being is if the parent was less stressed. Therefore, while this is a bit removed from what this research project focused on empirically, it has a broader theme of sacrificing your own well-being for the child. This area of sacrifice is a really interesting one, I think, especially given recent calls by the U.S. Surgeon General for more work on the well-being of caregivers.