Because the foundations of healthy eating behavior are laid in early childhood, researchers point out. Young children learn to regulate their appetite through a combination of biological, psychological and sociological factors. Here the authors propose a model that explores these factors and their interactions, providing guidelines to better understand the self-regulation of appetite in children.
Lead author Sehyun Ju, a human development researcher at the University of Illinois, notes that “when we talk about obesity, the usual advice from doctors is often to simply eat less and exercise more. But this is a simplistic recommendation, almost giving the impression that an individual’s willpower solely determines their approach to food.”
Appetite self-regulation is related to general self-regulation, but it concerns more specifically the ability to regulate food intakewith implications for development and metabolic health.
Children are born with an ability to regulate appetite based on hunger and fullness signals,
however, they too are subject to increased exposure to environmental factors and their food intake is increasingly guided by psychological motivations. It is therefore important to adopt a developmental perspective to monitor and even regulate changes in eating behaviors over time.
The study therefore proposes a complete framework based on 3 types of interacting factors:
- biological factorsincluding sensory experience, physiological signals of hunger and satiety, brain-gut interaction and the influence of the gut microbiome;
- psychological factorsincluding emotional self-regulation, cognitive control, stress regulation, and reward processing;
- social factors finally, including parental behavior and eating practices, culture, geographic location and food insecurity. They include in particular parent-child interactions around food but also care and education practices not linked to food which can have an impact on the child’s emotional regulation. The household food environment, the cultural value of food, and the availability of food.
- The child’s individual “temperament” is taken into account because it can modify the influence of these 3 types of factors. Children each react differently to stimuli depending on their psychological and emotional constitution. Openness to novelty and positive anticipation can influence a child’s appetite for new foods. If a parent pressures their child to eat, this can also be counterproductive in a child who is highly sensitive to negative emotions…
The child’s developmental stage is also taken into account: infants benefit from basic appetite regulation based on physiological signals. They gradually become more sensitive to external stimuli, and by the age of 3 to 5, children begin to develop greater self-control and better emotional regulation.
This model of development of the food regulation system in children proposed by these researchers lists and thus takes into account the various combined influences of multiple factors on the self-regulation of appetite and their motivations to approach food: “For example, the presence of appetizing foods may not generate the same responses in all children. Some may approach food as a reward, others will regulate their emotions. The underlying motivations are diverse and influenced by external factors but also the temperamental characteristics of each child.”
An empirical study on parent-child interactions during meals is underway, which will further clarify how the dyadic interaction between the child and the caregiver influences the child’s eating habits. The objective is also to better identify factors of appetite or withdrawal from food in some children.
Ultimately, identifying particularly obesogenic environmental influences based on children’s temperamental characteristics will make it possible to implement better targeted prevention approaches in each child. If children are food insecure, they also show certain reward responses to food stimuli, which helps detect this insecurity.
The goal is huge, and it’s the focus of this STRONG Kids 2 project, which studies how individual biology interacts with the home environment to promote healthy eating habits in young children.
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