Maternal feeding practices and children's food intake during an ad libitum buffet meal: Results from the GUSTO cohort

Abstract

Parents' feeding practices have been shown to be associated with children's food intake and weight status, but little is known about feeding practices in Asian countries. This study used behavioral observation to explore the feeding practices of 201 mothers of 4.5 year-old children in Singapore during an ad libitum buffet lunch. Feeding practices were coded from videos, focusing on behaviors used to prompt the child to eat more food (autonomy-supportive and coercivecontrolling prompts to eat, suggesting items from buffet), those to reduce intake (restriction, questioning food choice), and those related to eating rate (hurrying or slowing child eating). Child outcome measures included energy consumed, variety of food items selected, and BMI. Maternal restriction and trying to slow child eating rate were associated with higher energy consumed by the child (r=0.19 and 0.13, respectively; p<0.05). Maternal autonomy-supportive prompts and restriction were associated with a greater variety of items selected by children (r=0.19 and 0.15, respectively; p<0.05). The frequency of maternal feeding practice use differed across ethnic groups, with Malay mothers using the most prompts to eat (p<0.05), Chinese mothers most likely to question a child's food choice (p<0.01), and Indian mothers the last likely to tell the child to eat faster (p<0.001). There were no differences between ethnic groups for other feeding practices. No associations were found between feeding practices and child BMI. It is possible that feeding practices related to restriction and slowing child eating are adopted in response to children who consume larger portions, although longitudinal or intervention studies are needed to confirm the direction of this relationship and create local recommendations.

Estimated prevalence of eating disorders in Singapore

“…Mothers of young children in Singapore also tend to show a high level of involvement in their children's eating behaviors (Fries et al, 2019). Past studies have found that controlling parenting practices related to food and maternal feeding restriction is associated with persistent problematic eating (Ellis, Galloway, Webb, Martz, & Farrow, 2016; Fernandez et al, 2020).…”

Controlling and less controlling feeding practices are differentially associated with child food intake and appetitive behaviors assessed in a school environment

“…Parent‐reports of child diet are vulnerable to recall errors and bias, 33 and are known to overestimate child consumption, particularly at preschool age 34 . Further, many of the studies utilizing behavioral tests of appetite have taken place at home or in laboratory settings 9,35,36 . The latter (laboratory meal tests) allow for controlled manipulations of different food options and enable objective, standardized comparisons of objectively measured intake, but these artificial settings could also influence children's food consumption, especially when tests are administered on just one occasion.…”

Development of a home‐use method for the evaluation of food products by children with and without Down syndrome

“…Environmental factors influence a child's eating. Feeding practices, including parental interactions, influence what a child eats, a child's weight, diet, food acceptance, and eating behaviors (Blissett, 2011;Edelson et al, 2016;Fogel et al, 2018;Fries, Chan, et al, 2019;. Fogel et al (2018) found that children who eat faster and have high energy intake were prompted to eat during mealtime.…”

“…Within food texture specifically, texture preferences and the role of early eating experiences were previously explored using a HUT (Blossfeld, Collins, Kiely, & Delahunty, 2007). The application of observational methods in feeding studies has also been employed to better understand eating from an objective standpoint, using trained coders and a well-developed coding scheme (Fries, Chan, et al, 2019).…”

“…The focus of the coding scheme was to focus on techniques used by parents to encourage children to eat the presented food product. An observational coding scheme was developed which incorporated prompts from previous established coding schemes (Edelson et al, 2016;Fries et al, 2017;Fries, Chan, et al, 2019;Orrell-Valente et al, 2007), with minor modifications (Table 7). Prompts were coded across the three time periods from the observational coding of children, baseline state, initial presentation, and food engagement.…”