Mealtimes Matter

The Mealtimes Matter study aims to better understand young children’s mealtime practices in early childhood settings and how best to support families and educators to promote positive mealtimes. This study carried out intensive observations in 10 early Childhood Education and Care services in Queensland.

We are no longer recruiting volunteers for this study

Thank you to all the families and services who participated in this study. Published research can be found here [hyperlink]?

The Mealtimes Matter Study examined mealtimes in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services to better understand how services could be supported to provide positive mealtimes.

Mealtimes Matter commenced in 2019 and recruited 48 children aged 3-5 years and 10 ECEC services from communities experiencing high levels of child developmental vulnerability in metropolitan Queensland to learn about food provision and feeding practices in ECEC.

We collected data from mealtimes in ECEC services to learn about :

What children are eating during ECEC meals
Which feeding practices are used to support children’s eating and whether this varies between family and service provided food.
The quality of educator-child interactions at mealtimes
The impact of food scarcity and food and nutrition security on ECEC
How best to support ECEC services to provide positive, supportive mealtimes.