Objective: To discover whether eating behaviour traits show continuity and stability over childhood. Subjects/Methods: Mothers of 428 twin children from the Twins Early Development Study participated in a study of eating and weight in 1999 when the children were 4 years old. Families were contacted again in 2006 when the children were aged 10 years, with complete data on 322 children; a response rate of 75%. At both times, mothers completed the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ) for each child. Continuity was assessed with correlations between scores at the two time points, and stability by changes in mean scores over time.Results: For all CEBQ subscales, correlations between the two time points were highly significant (P-values o0.001). For satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, emotional overeating and food fussiness, correlations ranged from r ¼ 0.44 to 0.55, with lower continuity for emotional undereating (r ¼ 0.29). Over time, satiety responsiveness, slowness in eating, food fussiness, and emotional undereating decreased, while food responsiveness, enjoyment of food and emotional overeating increased. Conclusions: Eating behaviours, including those associated with a tendency to overeat, emerge early in the developmental pathway and show levels of individual continuity comparable to stable personality traits. Appetitive traits related to higher satiety tended to decrease with maturation, while those associated with food responsiveness tended to increase. This pattern is consistent with strong tracking of body mass index alongside a progressive increase in the risk of obesity.
The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that socioeconomic status (SES) moderates the association between parental weight and changes in BMI from childhood to early adolescence. Participants included 428 twin children from 100 families with obese parents (“obese families”) and 114 sociodemographically matched families with normal‐weight parents (“lean families”) who were assessed in their homes (age = 4.4). Follow‐up study was conducted 7 years later (age = 11.2) on 346 children (81%). Complete data were available for 333 children. Family SES was indexed with maternal education. Children's weights and heights were measured to calculate BMI s.d. scores based on 1990 British norms. Overweight was defined as >91st BMI centile. In children with obese parents, BMI s.d. scores increased from 0.51 at age 4 to 1.06 at age 11. In children with lean parents, BMI s.d. scores decreased from 0.11 to 0.05. Prevalence of overweight remained stable from age 4 to 11 in children with lean parents (8% to 9%), but it more than doubled in children with obese parents (17% to 45%). There was a significant interaction between parental weight and family SES (P < 0.01), so that in children with lean parents there was no SES difference in the BMI status from age 4 to 11; however, in children with obese parents, the increase in adiposity was significantly greater in lower SES families. These results suggest that parental leanness confers significant protection against development of overweight in children regardless of family SES, while parental obesity is an adverse prognostic sign, especially in lower SES families.
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