Predicting preschool children's emotional eating: The role of parents' emotional eating, feeding practices and child temperament

Abstract

Emotional eating (EE; defined as overeating irrespective of satiety and in response to emotional states) develops within childhood, persists into adulthood, and is linked with obesity. The origins of EE remain unclear, but parental behaviours (e.g., controlling feeding practices and modelling) and child characteristics (e.g., temperament) are often implicated. To date, the interaction between these influences has not been well investigated. This study explores whether the relationship between parent and child EE is shaped by parental feeding practices, and if the magnitude of this relationship varies as a function of child temperament. Mothers (N = 244) of 3-5-year-olds completed questionnaires about their EE, feeding practices, their children's EE and temperament. Results showed that parental use of food to regulate children's emotions fully mediated the relationship between parent and child EE, and using food as a reward and restricting food for health reasons partially mediated this relationship.Analyses demonstrated that the mediated relationship between parent and child EE via use of food as a reward and restriction of food for health reasons varied as a function of child negative affect, where high child negative affect moderated these mediations. These findings suggest child EE may result from interrelationships between greater parent EE, use of food as a reward, restriction of food for health reasons and negative affective temperaments, but that greater use of food for emotion regulation may predict greater child EE irrespective of child temperament.

Dyadic Predictors of Willing to Engage in Physical Activity and Emotional Eating in Children and Adolescents with Mild and Moderate Intellectual Disability

“…Interestingly, however, it was not possible to confirm a significant relationship between the pressure to eat and emotional eating, and further research is needed to more thoroughly analyze the mechanism underlying the relationship between these variables. Perhaps there are significant moderators/mediators of this relationship (e.g., intensity of negative affect, child’s body weight; [ 24 ]).…”

“…Equally important as physical activity for children with intellectual disabilities is their adequate intake of energy and nutrients, which play a very important role in their development [ 22 ]. Balanced (healthy) eating behavior involves, among other things, starting and ending a meal in response to hunger and satiety signals [ 23 , 24 ]. However, in many studies, (over)eating in the absence of hunger is increasingly being observed in children’s eating patterns, which may be related to the emotional state of the child and the lack or insufficient flexibility in dealing with emotions effectively [ 25 ].…”

“…The study of emotional eating in children is difficult because parents: (1) still largely control their children’s food choices [ 31 ], (2) (according to a controlling/authoritarian feeding style) may be convinced that children do not fully know what and how much they should eat, therefore significant (often rigid) restrictions should be introduced and pressure should be put on them to finish their meals [ 32 ], and (3) often use rewards in the form of unhealthy snacks [ 33 ]. Such practices result in children reaching for unhealthy snacks more often in response to negative emotions [ 23 ], and, overall, children are at an increased risk of overeating and undereating (e.g., in order to comply with their parents’ requests—regardless of the signals of hunger and satiety—children eat everything on their plates; children feel strong stress and aversion to products, due to pressure from their parents), which can cause serious weight problems (both underweight and overweight/obesity) [ 24 , 32 ]. When analyzing the predictors of emotional eating in children, two more issues are worth mentioning.…”

Temperament and emotional overeating: the mediating role of caregiver response to children’s negative emotions

“…Emotional overeating (EOE) involves excessive food consumption to regulate negative emotions and has been observed from early childhood throughout the lifespan (Messerli-Bürgy et al, 2018;Stone et al, 2022). This eating behavior often incorporates the consumption of energy-dense foods that are high in fat, calories, and sugar, which increases the risk of obesity (Steinsbekk et al, 2016;Messerli-Bürgy et al, 2018;Favieri et al, 2021).…”

“…This eating behavior often incorporates the consumption of energy-dense foods that are high in fat, calories, and sugar, which increases the risk of obesity (Steinsbekk et al, 2016;Messerli-Bürgy et al, 2018;Favieri et al, 2021). As pediatric obesity is one of the major global health concerns, there has been growing interest in identifying early precursors of obesogenic eating behaviors, including EOE (Haycraft et al, 2011;Topham et al, 2011;Ju et al, 2022a;Stone et al, 2022). Research suggests that EOE is particularly susceptible to the influence of relational and environmental factors beyond genetics (Blissett et al, 2010;Steinsbekk et al, 2016;Ju et al, 2022a;Stone et al, 2022), as well as to child characteristics involving reactivity and regulation (Rothbart and Derryberry, 1981).…”