Trial Outcomes
satiety
COLD
Video cameras simultaneously recorded the meals from 2 angles: frontal view of the child and frontal view of the parent. The recordings were merged into 1 double-view movie and coded using Datavyu software, version 1.2.2 (Datavyu Team).Food consumption of the parent-child dyads was coded from the video recordings by independent coders using a standardized coding system. Key variables were the number of pieces of fruits and vegetables, the number of bread and cold cuts (ie, slices of bread, cheese, and cold cut meat; teaspoons of butter and sweet spreads), the amount of dessert (teaspoons of chocolate pudding or fruit yogurt; number of cookies), and the amount of water and sugar-sweetened beverages in milliliters (estimated to the nearest 100 mL). All participants were offered the same food and beverage categories (ie, fruits and vegetables, bread and cold cuts, dessert, and water and sugar-sweetened beverages) and serving sizes. Foods served were held constant within families across regular and longer conditions. The exact food type (eg, type of bread and type of fruit) reflected the child’s preferences (eg, favorite bread and top-3 preferred fruits) that were reported in the online preassessment and thus varied between families. Due to the natural variation in the size of fruits and vegetables, it was not possible to ensure that all pieces were uniform. The weight range was 10 to 14 g for cherry tomatoes and 6 to 10 g for grapes and tangerine segments. Other fruits and vegetables (eg, apples and cucumbers) were cut into pieces weighing 9 to 11 g. Variability in size likely balanced out across conditions.In an independent pilot study (N = 10), negative communication was not observed within dyads (Mattea Dallacker, PhD, unpublished data, 2016). We therefore measured variability between the 2 conditions in self-rated mealtime atmosphere and observed the amount of interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication was defined as positive or neutral verbal information exchange (eg, about interests or family life), including joking and commenting on feelings or emotions, and was coded from the video recordings using a standardized system (ABC Mealtime Coding SystemThe number of bites taken per minute was coded from the video recordings (see Llewellyn et alCoding was conducted by 2 trained research assistants who were blinded to the trial objective. An independent rater coded a randomly selected 20% of the videos. Interrater reliability was high for food consumption (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.964-0.997) and interpersonal communication (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.934).Demographic characteristics, family mealtime duration, and food preferences of the child were collected in the online preassessment. All participants were from Berlin, Germany; ethnicity was not assessed. Parents were asked to measure the duration of their next main family meal and to use this duration as a basis for estimating their regular mealtime duration. Children’s food preferences were measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale, which was adapted from Fildes and colleagues,After both evening meals at the laboratory, parents rated their satiety on a visual analog scale with the poles of 