The closure of early years settings due to the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-cultural discussion of its impact on caregiver’s feeding practices and their preschool child’s eating

Introduction: School summer breaks are often associated with unhealthy weight gain, especially among preschool children. There are concerns that the closure of early years settings (e.g., preschool, nursery, childminding) during the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with food insecurity, changes to eating habits, reliance on processed foods, and reduced physical activity. Over time, this might lead to an increase in childhood obesity.

Methods: To investigate how the closure of early years settings impacted caregiver’s feeding practices and their child’s eating behaviour, an online survey was launched in the UK and Romania. Participants provided answers to open-ended questions assessing the impact of restrictions related to COVID-19 and closed-ended questions regarding their family characteristics. In total, 71 UK caregivers and 75 Romanian caregivers (N=146, Mage = 34.97, SD = 4.99) who had children aged between 3 and 5 years participated in the study.

Results: Many UK caregivers reported that their children “constantly” requested snacks and “junk” food, while also expressing concerns about food shortages, and a reduced availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, caregivers from Romania did not perceive changes to their feeding style or their children’s eating behaviour and did not highlight issues with food availability.

Conclusion: The qualitative themes identified in the UK data are consistent with quantitative data in adults which showed a significant increase in snacking. No research to date has investigated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania. The current study highlighted cross-cultural differences in snacking habits and food availability, which could be due to the different government-imposed restrictions. This may have contributed to a change in availability of snacks at home. Alternatively, it is possible that these differences were due to cross-cultural disparities in snacking habits. Therefore, there is a need to further investigate whether the closure of early years settings and the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in children’s snacking habits in other cultures, such as Italy and China. Future studies should also consider whether this increase in snacking may lead to unhealthy weight gain in preschool children.