Child Care Providers Stated Concerns With Letting Children Serve Themselves

provided to all focus group members. Qualitative analysis was used to categorize specific topic themes and summarize central findings. Results: Nutritionand food-related areas that parents identified in the focus groups as areas of concerns included children’s lack of knowledge about healthy food choices and getting children to eat variety of vegetables. Parents were most interested in gaining knowledge in these areas by attending parent/child classes with an emphasis on teaching children cooking skills. They suggested seasonal (3-4 times a year) 1-hour classes during evening hours, incentives to increase attendance, and topics that would increase confidence in cooking skills such as simple cooking techniques (knife skills, seasoning basics, etc) to incorporate into quick, tasty, and inexpensive meals. Conclusions and Implications: The focus groups identified parents’ concerns about feeding their families and generated valuable information to design and implement effective family cooking classes. This project is funded by Carol M. White PE grant awarded to the Cache County School District.