Revista de Nutrição Rev. Nutr. 2020;33:e190217 NUTRITION AND MATERNAL FEATURES IN AUTISM 1 https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-9865202033e190217 1 Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Health Practice and Research Hospital, Dietetic Department. Eskişehir, Turkey. 2 Gazi University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. Ankara, Turkey. 3 Karamanoğlu Mehmetbey University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. Yunus Emre Campus , İbrahim Öktem Street, 70100, Karaman, Turkey. Correspondence to: E. ADIGÜZEL. E-mail: <adiguzlemre@gmail.com>. Article elaborated from dissertation by N. ATEŞ-ŞAHİNKAYA, entitled “The evaluation of meal time behavior and nutritional status in children and adolescents with autism, and orthorexia tendency of their mothers”. Gazi University; 2016. How to cite this article Ateş-Şahinkaya N, Acar-Tek N, Adıgüzel E. The association between maternal features and nutritional problems in children with autism spectrum disorder. Rev Nutr. 2020;33:e190217. https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-9865202033e190217 CC BY ORIGINAL The association between maternal features and nutritional problems in children with autism spectrum disorder Associação entre características maternas e problemas nutricionais em crianças com transtorno do espectro do autismo Nur ATEŞ-ŞAHİNKAYA 1 0000-0002-5081-8455 Nilüfer ACAR-TEK 2 0000-0002-8772-9608 Emre ADIGÜZEL 3 0000-0002-9041-8990 A B S T R A C T Objective In the literature, there is almost no data on the relationship between autistic children’s nutritional problems and their mothers’ demographic and nutritional characteristics. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate whether there was a relationship between maternal features and nutritional problems in autistic children. Methods This study was conducted with the participation of 58 autistic children (6-19 years) and their mothers. Descriptive data were obtained with a general questionnaire. For the evaluation of children’s nutritional status, anthropometric measurements and 24-hour dietary recall were used. Also, the Brief Autism Mealtime Behavior Inventory and ORTO-15 questionnaires were used to evaluate the meal behavior of children and orthorexia tendency of mothers, respectively.