Children’s eating habits develop during their earliest years of life as biological and behavioral processes aimed at addressing health and growth requirements (Savage et al., 2007). In many underdeveloped countries, food scarcity is still a major threat to people’s survival, and parents’ eating behavior and child feeding practices have been largely influenced by this reality. On the contrary, children's food preferences and eating behaviors in today’s Saudi Arabia are shaped by unparalleled dietary abundance, where ready-to-eat, inexpensive, and palatable food meals are easily available. Such abundance, however, poses a huge challenge to a country’s healthcare system in particular and its economy in general. Moreover, early diet and lifestyle have long-term implications for a child’s later health and increase the risk of diseases like obesity, cardiometabolic illness, type 2 diabetes, and even cancer (Hübel et al., 2021).

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