Childhood kindness linked to healthier teen choices

Children who grow up helping, sharing, caring, and showing kindness are more likely to maintain healthy eating habits in their teen years. A new analysis finds that prosocial behavior in kids aligns with stronger fruit-and-vegetable consumption at ages when diets often decline.

The pattern hints at an unexpected route to better health: nurture kindness early in kids, and nutrition may follow.

The research draws on the Millennium Cohort Study, which has followed a nationally representative group of children in the United Kingdom from birth for more than two decades.

Parents reported how often their child engaged in helping, cooperating, and caring at ages five, seven, and 11. These profiles were then compared with teens’ self-reported fruit and vegetable intake at ages 14 and 17.

Putting kids’ strengths first

Farah Qureshi is the lead investigator from the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Too often, we focus on what is going wrong in young people’s lives, but what we hear from them time and time again is that they are tired of that narrative,” she said. “They want us adults to pay more attention to what is going right, including what they bring to their families and communities,”

Prior research has found that behaviors that help others (like volunteering) are related to better health in older adults.

“We wanted to understand whether these types of activities benefit youth as well, focusing on a broader range of prosocial behaviors, like acts of kindness, cooperation, and caring for others,” Qureshi said.

“In our current research, we found that children who consistently displayed more of these kinds of positive social behaviors at any age were more likely to maintain healthy eating habits into their teenage years, a time when dietary choices set patterns that can shape lifelong health.”

Her point is simple. When researchers look only for risks, they miss assets that help kids thrive. Prosociality may be one such asset. It shows up early. It can be reinforced at home, in schools, and in communities. And it may carry downstream benefits for health.

Benefits of kindness in kids

The team also explored why kindness might matter for diet. Stronger social ties can make daily life less stressful. Feeling capable and purposeful can help teens stick with better habits. Those are the kinds of pathways the authors had in mind.

“Prosocial behaviors, such as being considerate of others’ feelings, sharing, helping if someone is hurt or upset, being kind, and volunteering to help others, can influence health by strengthening children’s social ties,” said Julia K. Boehm from the Department of Psychology at Chapman University.

This can help improve psychological functioning by promoting better mood, purpose, feelings of competence, and enhanced capacity to cope with stress.

“All of these, in turn, serve as resources that may inform health-related choices, as is evidenced by our latest findings,” she said.

In short, practices that build empathy may also build the resilience needed to choose healthier foods. That does not replace nutrition education. But it may make it stick.

Reading between the findings

This study has notable strengths. The sample is large. The design is longitudinal. The follow-up spans key developmental stages.

The models also adjust for many family factors, including early eating behaviors reported by parents, socioeconomic conditions, and marital status. That helps reduce bias.

Still, some influences are hard to capture. Parenting styles and the finer details of home life may shape both kindness and diet in kids. The authors acknowledge that not every confounder can be measured in a national cohort. The association is robust, but it is not proof of causation.

Even with those caveats, the pattern fits with prior work. Cross-sectional studies have linked prosocial behavior to healthier lifestyles in youth. These new longitudinal data extend that evidence across childhood into adolescence.

Putting kindness into practice

If prosociality functions as a health asset, it invites a different playbook. Programs could encourage activities that focus on cooperation, service, and care.

Schools and youth groups already do this in many forms. The key is to recognize such efforts as health promotion, not just character education.

Study co-author Laura D. Kubzansky is an expert in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Asset-based interventions can open the door to new and creative health promotion strategies that engage youth in ways that speak to their inherent strengths, including shared values around kindness and cooperation,” said Kubzansky.

“Supporting prosociality in childhood may be a promising health promotion strategy for future consideration.”

That approach meets teens where they are. It leverages values that matter to them. And it may help cement better habits during a pivotal window.

The need for more kindness

The study closes on a broader note about the social climate – and what kids need from adults right now.

“We are living through a divisive time, when empathy can feel undervalued,” Qureshi said. “This study offers us an important reminder about the power of kindness and compassion not only for those who receive it, but also for those who give it.”

“Cultivating these qualities in kids may be an important and novel pathway to promoting public health.”

Nutrition advice often narrows to nutrients and numbers. This research widens the lens. Help kids practice kindness, and you may help them build the inner resources that keep healthy choices on the plate when it counts most.

The study is published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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