Does Examining the Childhood Food Experiences Help to Better Understand Food Choices in Adulthood?

Abstract

Impact of parental feeding practices on children’s eating behaviors is well-documented in the literature. Nevertheless, little is known about how many of these behaviors might persist into adulthood. There is a lack of a tool measuring childhood feeding experiences recollected by adults, while the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire (CFPQ) is used to measure parental feeding practices applied towards children. The aim of the study was to adapt the CFPQ to measure adults’ recollections of their childhood (5–10 years old) feeding experiences, to examine its discriminant validity and then to assess if these practices are related to adults’ food choices. In 2020, the modified version of CFPQ (mCFPQ) and questions on current food consumption were administered in a group of 500 adults twice over a two-week interval. The analysis included 443 participants whose questionnaires were correctly completed in both stages of the study. The Q-sorting procedure was used to test for discriminant validity of the questionnaire, i.e., confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis (EFA), Cronbach’s alpha, correlations coefficients, and the analysis of the differences between groups according to the intake of certain food products. Test–retest reliability was examined by calculating interclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for each obtained factor. As a result of EFA, five subscales were identified: “Restrictions”, “Healthy Eating Guidance”, “Pressure and Food Reward”, “Monitoring”, and “Child Control”. Items from these subscales created a new tool—Adults’ Memories of Feeding in Childhood (AMoFiC). Test for internal consistency, factor correlations, and discriminant validity proved satisfactory psychometric parameters of AMoFiC. “Pressure and Food Reward” and “Child Control” were associated with higher intake of sweets and salty snacks, whereas “Healthy Eating Guidance”, “Monitoring”, and “Restrictions” were associated with higher consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Despite the fact that the AMoFiC questionnaire requires further research, the findings of the study might be of practical use in counseling addressed to the parents.

Polish Adaptation and Validation of the Intuitive (IES-2) and Mindful (MES) Eating Scales—The Relationship of the Concepts with Healthy and Unhealthy Food Intake (a Cross-Sectional Study)

“…RHSC is characterized by eating in response to internal hunger and satiety cues [ 7 ]. Despite being an innate ability, RHSC may be disrupted by childhood food experiences associated with parental feeding practices that cause children to consume more food than the body needs [ 55 , 56 ]. Dieting, disordered eating, or eating disorders appearing in the past can also alter the sensation of hunger and satiety [ 7 , 57 ].…”

“…Another factor that could have affected those results are differences in dietary intake among women and men, i.e., lower/greater intake of certain foods [ 60 , 61 , 62 ]. Additionally, the above-mentioned negative experiences from the past might have had mediating role [ 7 , 55 , 56 , 57 ].…”

Maternal control and eating styles in children: The mediating role of emotion differentiation

“…Individual eating styles significantly impact physical and mental health in the short and long run, and adverse outcomes include weight gain (Koenders & van Strien, 2011; Lowe et al, 2013), weight loss (Herle et al, 2018) and dysfunctional eating patterns, such as overeating, excessive dieting, and binge eating (BE; Burton & Abbott, 2019; Cella et al, 2022; Sultson et al, 2017). It is also noteworthy that childhood eating habits can persist into adulthood, potentially shaping adult eating behaviors and health (Małachowska & Jeżewska-Zychowicz, 2021) and contributing to the risk of developing conditions like cardiovascular disease (e.g., Kaikkonen et al, 2013) and full-syndrome eating disorders (Herle et al, 2018).…”

De-Implementation of Detrimental Feeding Practices in Childcare: Mixed Methods Evaluation of Community Partner Selected Strategies

“…At the same time, ECE teachers cued children to their own hunger/satiety less than once per meal, on average [ 24 ]. Detrimental feeding practices have been linked with negative outcomes for children including decreased intake of healthy foods [ 10 ], increased intake of unhealthy foods [ 25 , 26 ], food aversions [ 27 ], neophobia [ 25 ], emotional eating [ 23 ], picky eating [ 23 ], diminished self-regulation [ 28 ], and excess weight development [ 23 ].…”