Are Preschoolers in the US Meeting Healthy Behavior Goals?
Only about 20% of preschoolers in the US followed five to six healthy habits, with clear differences by socioeconomic factors and geographic location. Children who lived in homes with enough food, had safe neighborhoods, had parents with excellent or very good mental health, and often ate meals with their families were more likely to have healthy behaviors.
METHODOLOGY:
Researchers analyzed data from the 2021 and 2022 National Survey of Children's Health to assess factors related to healthy behavior among children aged 3-5 years in the US.
A total of 23,123 children were included in the analysis, with data collected through parent or caregiver reports.
Six healthy behaviors were examined: daily consumption of fruits, daily consumption of vegetables, no sugary drinks, frequent outdoor play, limited screen time, and adequate sleep.
Logistic regression modeling was used to assess relationships between healthy behaviors and various characteristics of the child, family, and community.
TAKEAWAY:
The prevalence of healthy behaviors among preschoolers varied, with 32.4% not consuming sugary drinks and 65.3% consuming fruit daily. Only 20.3% of preschoolers engaged in five to six healthy behaviors.
Black non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and Asian non-Hispanic children were less likely to engage in five to six healthy behaviors than White non-Hispanic children (adjusted prevalence rate ratio [aPRR], 0.38, 0.57, and 0.64, respectively; P < .05 for all). Children aged 3 years were more likely to engage in five to six healthy behaviors than those aged 5 years.
Engagement in five to six healthy behaviors was more likely among children with parents with excellent or very good mental health (aPRR, 1.30), those living in safe neighborhoods (aPRR, 1.17), those living in homes with enough food (aPRR, 1.35), and those who ate meals with their families 4 or more days a week (aPRR, 1.70; P < .05 for all).
State-level variations were substantial, with Vermont having the highest adjusted prevalence of preschoolers engaging in five to six healthy behaviors (36.2%) and Mississippi, the lowest (8.3%).
IN PRACTICE:
'Study findings underscore the importance of the family context and the challenges families experience in supporting children's engagement in HBs [healthy behaviors], with fewer than half of preschoolers having no sugary beverages, limited screen time, or eating vegetables daily,' wrote the authors of the study. 'There are opportunities to promote healthy living among children across multiple domains of influence, including direct counseling, screening, and referral to community resources to meet basic needs, and supporting family-focused policies and programs,' they added.
SOURCE:
The study was led by Julie F. Donney, PhD, of the Office of Epidemiology and Research at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration in Rockville, Maryland. It was published online on July 14, 2025, in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
LIMITATIONS:
The design of the study made it difficult to determine if healthy behaviors were caused by certain factors. The link between family or community factors and healthy behaviors may be affected by unmeasured variables such as parenting styles or seasonal changes. Different definitions of healthy behaviors were not examined.
DISCLOSURES:
This study did not receive any specific funding. The authors declared having no conflicts of interest.
This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
38 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
Men Born in the Summer Are More Likely to Be Depressed, Study Finds
There really might be something to the idea of summertime sadness, at least for boys. A study finds that men born in the summer are more vulnerable to developing depression than men born at other times of the year. Researchers at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada, conducted the study, an international survey of adults. They found that men, but not women, were more likely to experience depression symptoms later in life if their birth occurred in the summer compared to other seasons. The findings suggest that mothers are exposed to important environmental risk factors that vary throughout the calendar year, the authors say, including levels of sunshine. Study author Mika Mokkonen was inspired to look into this topic by the kind of question you'd get making small talk at a party. 'The initial spark of the idea for this research arose when someone asked me if I believed in horoscopes. It got me wondering if there could potentially be a biological basis for them, in terms of how a person's birthday could be associated with physiological or mental features,' he told Gizmodo. Doctors have long known that seasonality can affect our current mental health—the clearest example being seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression that typically emerges during the winter months (summer SAD does exist, though). But there's only been limited research looking at a possible link between birth timing and mental health, according to Mokkonen. Mokkonen and his team conducted an online survey of 303 adults. Participants provided basic demographic information like age and answered two questionnaires commonly used to assess a person's level of anxiety and depression. After controlling for factors like age and income, the researchers found that summer-born men (specifically people whose biological sex was male) were noticeably more likely to report depression symptoms than men born anytime else. The team's findings were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Mental Health. These sorts of studies can only show a correlation between any two things (seasonality at birth and depression in this case) and not decidedly prove that being born in the summer can shape men's mental health. The researchers also admit they only collected survey responses over a brief two-month period in early 2024, meaning they might not have been able to capture people's 'variations in depression and anxiety scores.' And while some of the participants did come from different countries, a substantial proportion were college students. It's fair to say this is far from a thorough or complete study. So clearly more research is needed to replicate and expand on this preliminary finding. There's also the unanswered and likely complex question of why being born in the summer could be specifically worse for men but not women. Seasonality has long played a role in affecting the survival of most species, Mokkonen noted. And while people today are generally more sheltered from the harshest elements of the outside world than our hunter-gatherer ancestors were, the changing aspects of the seasons might still be enough to subtly influence us as we're developing in the womb. 'I would say it is possibly related to the environmental conditions of the mother during pregnancy,' Mokkonen said. 'Consider conditions like temperature and sunlight—how do those conditions vary across the year?' The researchers plan to continue investigating how other maternal factors, including the mother's diet and circulating hormone levels, can affect the later health of their children. Mokkonen also points out that regardless of the season they were born in, a majority of the people in their study reported having at least some symptoms of anxiety (66%) and depression (84%). In other words, while the seasons may hold some sway over us, some things are unfortunately common across the board.
Forbes
39 minutes ago
- Forbes
Thousands Of Microplastics Floating In Your Home And Car Are Slowly Damaging Your Lungs: Study
While we live in the Plastics Age, and it may no longer be a huge surprise that we are constantly exposed to microplastics, a new study claims that we might be inhaling 100 times more microplastics in our own homes and cars than scientists had previously estimated. To be more specific, human beings might be inhaling around 68,000 microplastic particles that are not visible to the naked eye inside their homes and cars. Lead author Nadiia Yakovenko and team from the Université de Toulouse in France had collected 16 air samples from their apartments and cars. The researchers then measured the concentrations of microplastics present in each air sample, as well as the size of the microplastics. They particularly focused on microplastics that are less than 10 micrometers and more likely to penetrate deep into lung tissues compared to fine particulate matter that is bigger than 10 micrometers or visible to the naked eye. Studies have found that inhaled particles larger than 10 µm are more likely to get collected in the upper respiratory tract and automatically get cleared out of your airways. However, your respiratory system cannot filter out fine particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers, and so, it can penetrate deeper into the lungs. Microplastics smaller than 10 micrometers are of particular concern because they could release toxic additives into your cardiovascular system along with other environmental pollutants that it might have absorbed while floating around in the air. Multiple studies have shown that microplastics could potentially disrupt your body's normal endocrine functions and might even increase the risk of various diseases like cancer. "Microplastic is a ubiquitous pollutant resulting from the global extensive human use of plastic materials since 1950 and the mismanagement of plastic waste. The term 'microplastic' refers to plastic particles between 1 µm and 5mm in size that come in a variety of shapes and polymer compositions," the authors explained in their study that was published in PLoS One on July 30. "Human inhalation of fine particulate microplastic 1–10 µm that penetrate deep lung tissue may contribute to causing lung tissue damage, inflammation, and associated diseases." "Over the past decade, microplastics have been detected in outdoor atmospheric aerosols and deposition, in various parts of the world, from urban and highly industrialized areas to remote mountainous regions, the marine boundary layer, and indoor environments. The ubiquitous presence of microplastics in the atmosphere raises many concerns about whether, and to what extent, we are inhaling microplastics from outdoor and indoor air, with the latter likely playing the most significant role in human exposure to microplastics through inhalation," they added. 'Recent studies have shown that the concentration of indoor suspended MPs is eight times higher than outdoors, and the concentration of indoor deposited microplastic dust is 30 times higher than outdoors. Given that people in developed nations spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, including 5% in cars, the potential for inhalation exposure to MPs in indoor environments is significantly higher and warrants attention.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How Many Steps a Day You Actually Need, According to New Research
Good news: You don't need to hit 10,000 steps a day to improve your health. According to a new study published in The Lancet Public Health, you can experience roughly the same benefits with fewer steps—around 7,000 per day. Researchers from the University of Sydney reviewed and analyzed long-term studies conducted between 2014 and 2025 that tracked people's daily steps and various health risks, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, cognitive function, and mental health, as well as overall mortality. Compared to walking 2,000 steps a day, the study found that walking 7,000 steps lowered the risk of dementia by 38%, type 2 diabetes by 22%, and cardiovascular disease by 25%. Researchers concluded that the incremental improvement beyond 7,000 steps per day was small, but they acknowledged that some figures may be less accurate than others because they were drawn from only a small number of studies. The researchers added that even a modest step count can help lower health risks. "For example, 4,000 steps per day compared with 2,000 steps per day was associated with substantial risk reduction, such as a 36% lower risk in all-cause mortality ... the message that every step counts for those who are able should be emphasized as a core public health message, regardless of the specific quantitative target." According to the study, the goal of 10,000 steps a day is an unofficial target without any clear evidence—it actually started as part of a marketing campaign in Japan. And while that many steps a day can be a good goal for active individuals, the researchers report that 7,000 steps per day "might be a more realistic and achievable target for some." Read the original article on Martha Stewart
