How important to follow diet habit?

Tell me how this works in your family. Do your kids follow your lead in their dietary habits? Or are you just hoping that the behaviors you're modeling today will be adopted by your kids later?

There's lots of food for thought here. First, these were just two days' reported diets. The data was collected way back in the mid-1990s. And the study only looked at simultaneous eating habits; it didn't predict whether behaviors parents model for young children might influence those children's diets once they became adults.

Still, the study expands the discussion beyond the old you-model-it, they'll-do-it saw. And it offers some solace to those of us who've felt we must be doing something wrong because our kids don't eat the way we do. The authors posit -- without providing supporting evidence -- that other influences, from peers to TV, might exert more influence over kids' eating habits than parents do.