Research Article

Identification and Characterization of Families That Are Positively Deviant for Childhood Obesity in a Latino Population: A Case-Control Study

Table 3

Representative quotes for each of the five themes identified from the qualitative description analysis alongside representative quotes from controls where appropriate.

Positive deviantsControls

1. Creating healthy food environments
“… why am I going to have this at the house and her being tempting in eating it. I’d rather not have it and this way whenever she opens the refrigerator well she’s not going to be tempted.” PD13“They can’t just freely go out, open up a bag of chips. They’ll say, ‘Mom, can I open up these Doritos?’ Then, I’ll look to see what I have to make sure… and I’ll be like, ‘All right, well, just get a little bit.’” C1
“That’s why I always make sure that they have them in the fridge, because I’d rather them eat as much fruit as they want than have to worry about giving them junk…. they’re at the bottom of the fridge drawer. He just opens it.” PD5“…but he likes to steal candy. He’ll come in the middle of the night. He’ll go in the refrigerator, take the yogurts. He’ll take the sweet bread we leave out at night on the table.” C12
“When we leave from here, I take a container with fruit for her. Sometimes–she really likes eating celery sticks. I take some celery for her.” PD14“…he’s really disciplined, he’ll tell me. ‘Mommy, can I grab this?’ ‘Yes.’ And potato chips, we do buy potato chips, but I don’t let them eat an entire bag.” C50

2. Message consistency related to snacks
“She really knows not to eat junk food, which she can’t eat it because we don’t have it. When she goes over to her cousins, she doesn’t eat there. She knows.” PD28“I noticed that the kids eat dinner over there and I cook dinner of here. There’s like a free for all kind of. Yeah, there’s was structure for them but it was like if the girls were hungry you know we’re going to eat this, we’re going to eat that. Just whatever they wanted.” C4
“Every Sunday we go out for walks with our bikes and he walks with us, for about two hours.” PD2

3. Confidence in making changes
“I don’t drink soda anymore either, so me and her... It was just something I wanted to do… it hasn’t been hard at all.” PD23“I would I like for her to eat veggies, but she doesn’t... Yeah, she doesn’t like them.” C6
“…Just the food part. We’re still having challenges on that. Hopefully, we can overcome that and just look for ideas. I’m always on Pinterest. I look at ideas of other parents because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that has picky eaters.” PD2“I stay away from certain foods, but I don’t... I guess, I do. I stay away from the foods that I know that my doctor would say no to. As far as portions, I’ve gotten smaller, but that’s about it.” C8

4. Making incremental changes
“Go out with them to play. Also before we hardly went out–and if we do not go out at least we do something for a while in the yard, we do activities, run or play or bicycle or so.” PD15“He always wanted the Debbie cakes and ice cream, he was always stuck on peanut butter and jelly and then I changed it.” C5
“She would eat like bag of chips too… It’s rare now. It’s maybe once or twice, she’ll eat it during the week.” PD23

5. Engaging the entire family
“Well, I mean, I figure we’re all eating the same thing, because if I make changes with one–then one is going to say, “Why are you guys eating that and the rest are not?” So, everyone is the same. We all eat the same thing.” PD12“I’m not drinking no more soda, so she doesn’t drink soda no more… She just drinks when she’s with my mom or sister, like I said, or her dad.” C9
“I already prohibited him from bringing her candy. I told him, ‘You can bring her things that she can eat, but healthy things. Fruit–bring her fruit, any kind of fruit you want to. She loves fruit, apples, grapes.’ I did struggle for a while to get him used to it, but it’s been a long time since he’s brought her that.” PD14“Yeah, because he’ll go and he’ll ask my grandpa, “Can I have this?” My grandpa will give it to him, even though I’ve already told my son no. My grandpa doesn’t know that so it just depends.” C13