ArticlePublic health nutrition2016
Pester power and its consequences: do European children's food purchasing requests relate to diet and weight outcomes?
Article in Public health nutrition, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Front-of-Package Nutrition Labeling for Foods and Beverages Marketed to Children: Behavioral, Nutritional, and Cognitive-Affective Outcomes and Methodological Quality-A Systematic Review.Comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety · 2026Pooled it
- Understanding the influence of physical resources and social supports on primary food providers' snack food provision: a discrete choice experiment.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2020Trial
- Children Learning About Secondhand Smoke (CLASS II): A Pilot Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2019Trial
- Nutrition security under constraint: food shopping, cooking, and structural barriers among Mexican immigrants in the Bronx, NYC.Food, culture, & society · 2026Article
- Strategies elementary school children use to influence mothers' food purchasing decisions.Maternal & child nutrition · 2023Article
- Advertising expenditures on child-targeted food and beverage products in two policy environments in Canada in 2016 and 2019.PloS one · 2023Article
- Children's Influence on Parents: the Bidirectional Relationship in Family Meal Selection.Journal of child and family studies · 2022Article
- Parental perceptions of the food environment and their influence on food decisions among low-income families: a rapid review of qualitative evidence.BMC public health · 2022Review
- Perceived effect of warning label on parental food purchasing and drivers of food selection among South African parents-An exploratory study.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Children's Perceptions about Environmental Sustainability, Food, and Nutrition in Chile: A Qualitative Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Article
- Digital Media Use in Association with Sensory Taste Preferences in European Children and Adolescents-Results from the I.Family Study.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- An online randomized trial of healthy default beverages and unhealthy beverage restrictions on children's menus.Preventive medicine reports · 2020Article
- Child Social Media Influencers and Unhealthy Food Product Placement.Pediatrics · 2020Article
- Pester Power: Examining Children's Influence as an Active Intervention Ingredient.Journal of nutrition education and behavior · 2020Article
- Association of neighbourhood food availability with the consumption of processed and ultra-processed food products by children in a city of Brazil: a multilevel analysis.Public health nutrition · 2018Article
- Are Big Food's corporate social responsibility strategies valuable to communities? A qualitative study with parents and children.Public health nutrition · 2017Article
- Cohort Profile: The transition from childhood to adolescence in European children-how I.Family extends the IDEFICS cohort.International journal of epidemiology · 2017Article
- Familial Resemblance in Dietary Intakes of Children, Adolescents, and Parents: Does Dietary Quality Play a Role?Nutrients · 2017Article
- Child-targeted TV advertising and preschoolers' consumption of high-sugar breakfast cereals.Appetite · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveChildren may influence household spending through 'pester power'. The present study examined pestering through parent-child food shopping behaviours in relation to children's diet and weight status.
designCross-sectional and prospective analyses drawn from the IDEFICS study, a cohort study of parents and their children. Children's height and weight were measured and their recent diets were reported by parental proxy based on the Children's Eating Habits Questionnaire-FFQ at baseline and 2-year follow-up. Parents also completed questionnaires at both time points about pestering, including whether the child goes grocery shopping with them, asks for items seen on television and is bought requested food items.
settingParticipants were recruited from eight European countries for the IDEFICS study (non-nationally representative sample). SUBJECTS: Study participants were children aged 2-9 years at enrolment and their parents. A total of 13 217 parent-child dyads were included at baseline. Two years later, 7820 of the children were re-examined.
resultsMost parents (63 %) at baseline reported 'sometimes' acquiescing to their children's requests to purchase specific foods. Pestering was modestly associated with weight and diet. At baseline, children whose parents 'often' complied consumed more high-sugar and high-fat foods. Children who 'often' asked for items seen on television were likely to become overweight after 2 years (OR=1·31), whereas 'never' asking protected against overweight (OR=0·72).
conclusionsPestering was modestly related to diet and weight in cross-sectional, but not longitudinal analyses. Asking for items seen on television had the most robust relationships across child outcomes and over time.
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