Assessing the Correlation Between Children’s Selection of Ideal Portions for Common Foods and Parental Feeding Practices
Open Access
- Author:
- Guinee, Caitlin
- Area of Honors:
- Nutritional Sciences
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Kathleen Loralee Keller, Thesis Supervisor
Alison D Gernand, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- portion size
parental feeding practices
childhood obesity
eating behavior - Abstract:
- The obesity epidemic has become a significant health concern for the United States in the past four decades. Alongside these increasing obesity rates in both adults and children, there has also been an increase in portion sizes of available foods. This has led to extensive research on the portion size effect, a phenomenon showing that both adults and children tend to eat more when they are served larger portions of food. Because of its implications for excess food consumption, the Portion Size Effect and its influence on children’s eating behaviors has been studied in order to identify more effective prevention and intervention strategies for pediatric obesity. In addition to portion size, parental feeding practices also play an important role influencing children’s eating behaviors. However, few studies have examined how children’s selection of food portions and parental feeding practices are related. The goal of this thesis was to assess the correlation between children’s selection of ideal portions for common foods and parental feeding practices of restriction, monitoring, and pressure to eat. The hypotheses were that 1) greater maternal restriction would be positively associated with children’s ideal portion size of high-ED (high-energy dense) foods and negatively associated with low-ED (low-energy dense) foods; 2) greater maternal monitoring would be positively associated with children’s ideal portion size of high-ED foods and negatively associated with low-ED foods; and 3) greater maternal pressure to eat will be negatively associated with children’s ideal portion size of high-ED foods and positively associated with low-ED foods. The study included 61 child participants between the ages of 7-8 years who varied in familial risk for obesity based on parents’ weight status. Low-risk children’s parents had a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 -24.9 kg/m2, and high risk children’s parents had a BMI greater than or equal to 30.0 kg/m2 for mothers and greater than or equal to 25.0 kg/m2 for fathers. In order to assess the child’s ideal portion preferences for common foods, children completed a Portion Size Survey at their first laboratory visit. Parents completed the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) to examine parental attitudes towards feeding as well as to assess three parental feeding practices of restriction, monitoring, and pressure to eat. Contrary to the hypotheses, there was no significant relationship between children’s ideal portion size selection for high-ED foods and the parent feeding practices of restriction (r= -0.089, P= 0.496), pressure to eat (r= -0.194, P= 0.133), and monitoring (r= -0.192, P= 0.138). Likewise, ideal portion selection for low-ED foods was also not related to feeding practices of restriction (r= -0.014, P=0.916), pressure to eat (r= -0.144, P= 0.272), and monitoring (r= -0.116, P= 0.376). There were some correlations found between children’s ideal portion of individual foods and parental pressure to eat, including apple slices (r= -0.278, P= 0.033), soup (r= -0.335, P= 0.037), and cornflakes (r= -0.351, P= 0.006), as well as between parental restriction and PB&J sandwiches (r= -0.513, P= 0.001), and parental monitoring with angel food cake (r= -0.267, P= 0.040). Because both measures are self-reported, it is possible that response biases may help explain why no correlations were observed. Additionally, the cohort was small and the children all had a healthy weight which may have limited variability in outcome measures. More research is needed to overcome these limitations and fully understand the interplay between children’s ideal portion size of foods and parental feeding practices.