English- and Spanish-speaking Latina mothers' beliefs about food, health, and mothering.

Parent beliefs regarding food, health, and child feeding behaviors among Latinos have not been well-documented. A series of eight focus groups were conducted with English-speaking and Spanish-speaking low-income Latina mothers of preschoolers to investigate their beliefs regarding how food and food preparation are related to their children's health and to their own roles as mothers. Systematic content analysis using NUDIST 6 revealed seven themes discussed by the focus groups. Integration of these themes revealed three major areas of consideration: (1) a lack of connection between the domains of eating, overweight, and health outcomes; (2) the role of parent modeling of eating behaviors; and (3) the use of feeding strategies that may not be conducive to the development of healthy eating behaviors. Furthermore, the data suggest that there are important distinctions among Latinos based on language preference, and that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to modeling Latino mothers' feeding beliefs may not be appropriate.