Parent served vegetable portion sizes and perception of food leftovers across different meal combinations: A cross sectional, online study.

Despite vegetables being commonly served at UK mealtimes, children’s consumption remains insufficient. Because portion sizes provided by parents predict children’s intake, understanding how parents decide on vegetable portions during meals is critical but underexplored. This study examined whether meal context and food combinations influence parent portion size decisions. In a novel online portion size task, 407 parents (203 female) of 4–8-year-old children selected portions of protein, carbohydrate, and vegetable items across nine meal combinations. Parents then anticipated how much food their child would leave after each meal. Meal factors (food items), child factors (food liking, familiarity, anticipated leftovers, eating traits, gender) and parental factors (mealtime goals and feeding practices) were explored as predictors of parent vegetable portion sizes and anticipated child vegetable leftovers. Smaller vegetable portions were associated with lower perceived child vegetable liking, greater anticipated vegetable leftovers, and parental goals to avoid mealtime stress, whereas goals to serve healthy foods predicted larger portions. Meal combinations had a stronger effect on anticipated vegetable leftovers than on portion sizes. Parents expected more vegetable leftovers when non-vegetable items were highly liked or anticipated to be leftover, while higher vegetable liking and familiarity predicted fewer leftovers. These findings suggest that parents base vegetable portion sizes primarily on expectations about individual foods rather than the overall meal. However, when anticipating leftovers, parents appear to consider the influence of more palatable, non-vegetable items on their child’s vegetable intake. Understanding these decision-making processes may inform strategies to support parents in serving appropriate vegetable portions and encouraging their intake.