Abstract

COELHO, Carolina; AFONSO, Lisa  and  OLIVEIRA, Andreia. Parental-Child Feeding Practices: Relation With Children’s Weight. Acta Port Nutr [online]. 2017, n.9, pp.6-11. ISSN 2183-5985.  https://doi.org/10.21011/apn.2017.0902.

Eating behaviours are shaped during childhood, and parents are crucial agents in this process. Parents adopt control feeding practices which influence children’s diet, in a way to increase or decrease their consumption, and thus could compromise their normal weight development. This review aims to study different parental-child feeding practices, focused in their individual effects, identifying the available instruments to evaluate them and the research studies conducted to establish an association between those practices and child’s weight. To conduct this review, a theoretical review in the PubMed® database was performed, supplemented by a snowball search. Only longitudinal studies (observational or experimental) which focus on the relation between parental-child feeding practices and dietary consumption or weight/body mass index of preschool-aged children were included. Parental-child feeding practices at early ages are frequently assessed by the Child Feeding Questionnaire, which includes three domains on pressure to eat, restriction and monitoring. The association between parental-child feeding practices and child’s weight has been inconsistent in the literature, due to the cross-sectional nature of several studies, which hampers the evaluation of the direction of these associations. This is particularly important because this effect could be bidirectional, which means the feeding practices could have a longitudinal influence child’s weight, but they also could be a reaction to the child’s weight. In general, pressure to eat seems to decrease child’s weight, while restriction appears to increase it. Both feeding practices have bidirectional effects. For monitoring, inconclusive results were found. The covert control appears to be positively associated with child’s weight while overt control shows a negative association. The knowledge on parental-child feeding practices and their complex association with child’s weight could serve as support to develop successful intervention programs to prevent and treat childhood obesity, and thus should be given value in the future.

Keywords : Diet; Longitudinal studies; Body mass index; Childhood; Childhood obesity; Weight; Feeding behaviours.

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