Parents’ encouragement
Most parents (70–75 %) always encouraged their children to exercise and eat vegetables/ fruits while < 10 % of them never encouraged their children to do so post-intervention. Lebanon ranked the highest in terms of parents’ encouragement, whereby parents were the most likely to always encourage their children to exercise or eat healthy food. In the total sample, children whose parents always encourage them to eat vegetables and fruits had 2.16-time higher odds of having healthy food twice or more per week post-intervention than those whose parents sometimes or never did. The same association was found between parents’ encouragement and physical activities, with higher odds of playing sports outside school twice or more per week when parents encouraged children to do so.