Maternal encouragement and discouragement: Differences by food type and child weight status

Abstract

Childhood obesity prevention practice guidelines recommend that parents encourage the intake of certain types of foods and discourage the intake of others. It is unknown if parents of children of different weight statuses encourage or discourage their child's intake differently based on food type. The objective of this study was to determine the association of child weight status with maternal for four different types of food. A total of 222 mother-child dyads were video-taped during the standardized, sequential presentation of four foods to both participants: cupcakes (familiar dessert), green beans (familiar vegetable), halva (unfamiliar dessert) and artichoke (unfamiliar vegetable). Mother's encouragements and discouragements of child intake were reliably coded for each food type. Poisson regression models were used to test the independent association of child weight status (normal weight, overweight and obese) with encouragement and discouragement for each food type. Mothers of an obese, vs. normal or overweight child, had lower rates of encouragement for a familiar dessert (p = 0.02), and a higher rates of discouragements for a familiar dessert (p=0.001), a familiar vegetable (p=0.01), and an unfamiliar vegetable (p = 0.001). There were no differences in encouragements or discouragements between mothers of an overweight, vs. obese child, for any of the 4 food types. Mothers of obese children may alter their feeding behavior differentially based on food type. Future work should examine how interventions promoting maternal encouragement or discouragement of different food types impact child weight status.

A mixed methods analysis of maternal response to children's consumption of a palatable food: differences by child weight status

“…For this analysis, only the segment during which the mother and child were presented with chocolate cupcakes (two Hostess chocolate cupcakes, 104.96 ± 0.5 g per participant) was analysed. The decision was made to focus on the segment with chocolate cupcakes as prior work has shown that this palatable energy‐dense food elicited more restrictive feeding behaviours from mothers than the other foods offered.…”

“…To date, maternal feeding practices, such as restriction of child intake, have mainly been studied using self‐report questionnaires or coding of simple feeding behaviours (e.g. the mother denying the child's request for more food, moving the plate away from the child, appealing to health considerations or critiquing the manner in which the child is eating) both at home and in laboratory settings . Prior studies of restriction have found mixed associations with markers of child adiposity One reason for these inconsistencies may be that these methodologies capture the mothers' behaviours either by self‐report, which is vulnerable to bias, or by relatively simple observational measures of behaviour in isolation from the child, which are less well suited to capture subtler behaviours, facial expressions and verbal exchanges that occur in the course of parent–child interaction.…”

Affective tone of mothers' statements to restrict their children's eating

“…The Structured Eating Protocol (SEP) (Goulding, et al, 2014; Pesch, et al, 2016; Radesky, et al, 2014) is a laboratory based eating interaction designed to capture children’s and mothers’ responses to different foods. Dyads were excluded (n = 49) from participating in this protocol if the mother had a food allergy or the child had a food allergy (which had developed since inclusion in the original study).…”

“…Maternal restriction of child food intake was measured in the SEP, which is a standardized, structured eating protocol which has been described in detail elsewhere (Goulding, et al, 2014; Pesch, et al, 2016; Radesky, et al, 2014). This protocol examines the mother’s and child’s responses to different types of foods in a laboratory setting, thereby reducing the broad variability that may occur during observations of home mealtimes (e.g., sibling interference, mother attending to other family members or food preparation, etc.…”

Maternal discouragement and child intake of a palatable dessert: A multilevel sequential analysis

“…The current study examined maternal discouragements of child eating, and child subsequent bites in response to maternal discouragements using a multi-level sequential analysis of mother and child behavior during a videotaped laboratory eating interaction called the Structured Eating Protocol (SEP) (Goulding, et al, 2014; M. H. Pesch, D. P. Appugliese, et al, 2016; Radesky, et al, 2015), described below.…”