Association between Children’s Appetite Patterns and Maternal Feeding Practices

Abstract

This study explored associations between children's appetites and maternal feeding practices. The participants, 614 parents of 3-to 6-year-old children from kindergartens in Tokyo, Japan, completed self-administered questionnaires. The children's appetites were measured using the Enjoyment of Food (EF) and Food Responsiveness (FR) scales of the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire. Using cluster analysis, we examined three appetite patterns ("both low", "high EF and low FR", and "both high"). The three appetite patterns were associated with children's obesity index. The "both low" pattern was associated with the highest maternal pressure to eat. The "high EF and low FR" patterns were related to an established snack time. The "both high" pattern was associated with higher maternal instrumental feeding compared with the "high EF and low FR" types. The results of this study will facilitate the development of targeted interventions and better parental guidance on maternal feeding practices and their association with children's eating behaviours.

Association between Australian-Indian mothers' controlling feeding practices and children's appetite traits

“…Secondary findings using proxy indicators of children's diet quality showed that higher pressure to eat was associated with poor dietary choices (lower number of core foods consumed), whereas higher monitoring was related to favourable dietary choices (lower number of non-core foods consumed). Overall, these findings are consistent with the wider literature examining motherchild feeding interactions in Caucasian (Gregory et al, 2010a) and non-Caucasian (Ainuki & Akamatsu, 2011) populations. Further cross-cultural longitudinal studies are required to confirm the preliminary findings and test the direction of associations observed here.…”

Maternal feeding practices predict weight gain and obesogenic eating behaviors in young children: a prospective study

“…In one cross-sectional study, maternal instrumental feeding was associated positively with children’s snacking behaviors [22]. Furthermore, associations between maternal instrumental feeding and food enjoyment and food responsiveness in 3 to 6 year-olds have been found [23] but no significant association was found between instrumental feeding and child BMI z -scores in the only cross-sectional study that examined this relationship [19]. Although data is lacking, emotional feeding, i.e., using food to help a child regulate emotions, has also been posited to be associated positively with child weight status and obesogenic eating behaviors as a result of encouraging children to eat in the absence of hunger [19,20,22].…”

Eating Behaviors of Preschool-Aged Children – Gender-Linked Differences

“…The questionnaire was developed and validated in the United Kingdom. It has been used for different research purposes, such as to examine the relationship between obesity and eating behaviors (CARNELL and WARDLE, 2007;RODGERS et al, 2013), the relationship with body mass index (POWERS et al, 2006;VIANA et al, 2008) to examine continuity in children's eating behaviors across time (ASHCROFT et al, 2007) and to examine the relations between children's maternal feeding practices (AINUKI and RIE, 2011;BLISSETT et al, 2010). WARDLE et al's (2001a) Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire has 35-items with eight scales, this survey was taken as a basis for the current study for the reasons stated above.…”