Parental Sustainable Eating and Healthy Nutrition Attitudes in Relation to Preschool Children’s Dietary Intake and Weight Status: A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between parents’ sustainable eating behaviours and healthy nutrition attitudes and explored their associations with preschool children’s dietary intake and anthropometric indicators.Methods: This cross-sectional study included 95 parent–child dyads recruited by convenience sampling from two preschools in Istanbul. Parental sustainable eating behaviours and healthy nutrition attitudes were assessed using validated scales. Children’s dietaryintake was assessed with one parent-reported 24-hour recall, and anthropometry was measured with standardised procedures. The primary outcome was the association between the two parental constructs; associations with child dietaryintake and anthropometry were secondary, while weight-status analyses were exploratory. Correlation analyses, subgroup comparisons, and exploratory hierarchical linear and binary logistic regression analyses were performed.Results: The mean Behaviors Scale Towards Sustainable Nutrition and Attitude Scale for Healthy Nutrition scores were 108.42 ± 14.03 and 79.89 ± 9.85, respectively. The scores were moderately correlated (r = 0.517, p < 0.001), but neither was significantly correlated with children’s reported energy intake or anthropometric z-scores. Food-label readers had higher sustainable eating scores (p = 0.001), and healthy nutrition attitude scores differed across diet-history groups (p = 0.009). Overall, 30.5% of children had overweight or obesity. In exploratory analyses, the logistic model (p = 0.132) and the hierarchical models for BMI-for-age z-score were not statistically significant.Conclusion: Favourable parental sustainable eating behaviours co-occurred with healthier nutrition attitudes but were not consistently associated with children’s single-day reported intake or anthropometric status. Child weight-status analyses were exploratory and should not be interpreted causally.