- Children who are highly motivated by food are more influenced by feeding practices and parent behaviours that can lead to emotional eating
- Using food as a reward for good behaviour or overtly restricting foods from children can place those children at greater risk of emotional eating
- Researchers surveyed 185 mothers of young children aged between three and five, asking about their eating habits and those of their children.
New research at Aston University is helping to unpick the complex connections between the eating habits of children and their mothers.
The research, by PhD student Rebecca Stone, surveyed 185 mothers of young children aged between three and five, asking about their eating habits and those of their children. The findings are published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Children pick up lots of behaviours by copying their parents – and this is true of their eating habits as well. The aim of the new research was to see how much of children’s emotional eating is explained by the way mothers use food as part of their parenting practices as well as the children’s own attitudes to food more generally.
‘Emotional eating’ is when we turn to food, such as cakes, chocolate and snacks, not because we’re hungry but to compensate for when we’re feeling sad, low or anxious. The survey included questions for mothers about how much they and their children ate in response to emotional states. It also asked about how much children were motivated by food and driven to eat or ask for food throughout the day, which is known as ‘food approach’ behaviour.
Stone also asked mothers about the feeding practices that they used with their children – in particular about whether they used food to reward children for good behaviour, or visibly restricted their child’s access to foods, for example having foods in the house but forbidding them. These practices have been shown to make children more interested in food and have also been linked to greater emotional eating in children.
When Stone analysed the responses, she found that children who were very motivated by food were more likely to pick up emotional eating behaviour from their parents. Stone used a complex statistical method, known as moderated mediation analysis, to decipher how the different aspects of the relationship interacted: emotional eating in the mother, how she parented the child around food, the child’s food approach tendencies and emotional eating.
Professor Claire Farrow, who was one of Stone’s PhD supervisors at Aston University, said: “This study demonstrates that the way that children develop eating behaviours is very complex, and that emotional eating appears to be shaped in part by an innate drive towards food.
"In this study we found that parenting practices interact with children’s eating tendencies and that children who are the most driven to approach food are the most influenced by feeding practices that can lead to emotional eating. These findings suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to child feeding isn’t always appropriate and that some children are more susceptible to the influence of behaviours that can lead to emotional eating.”
Stone agreed: “Our findings suggest that children who were more motivated to eat were more predisposed to associate food with emotions. Our research supports the idea that emotional eating is a learned behaviour which children often develop in pre-school years, but that some children are more vulnerable to developing emotional eating than others”
Although common amongst parents, the research also highlights that using food as a reward or visibly restricting the child’s access to certain foods - even in children as young as three – can be problematic. Giving a piece of chocolate as a reward or telling children they can only have one biscuit as a ‘treat’ is likely to create an emotional response in the child which they then connect to those foods.
Stone said: “The research suggests that restricting food in front of children who are already more motivated by food tends to backfire and makes children crave restricted foods even more. What seems to work best is known as ‘covert restriction’ - not letting children know that some foods are restricted (for example, not buying foods that you do not want your child to eat) and avoiding instances where you have to tell children that they are not allowed certain foods.”
The researchers suggest parents looking for practical advice on healthy eating and fussy eating should check out the Child Feeding Guide, a free online resource created by Professor Claire Farrow, Professor Emma Haycraft & Dr Gemma Witcomb at Aston and Loughborough Universities.
For more information about studying psychology please visit our course pages and for more information about the School of Psychology please go to our website.
- Notes to editors
By Rebecca Stone, Professor Emma Haycraft, Professor Jacqueline Blissett and Professor Claire Farrow – is published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mcn.13341
About Aston University
Founded in 1895 and a University since 1966, Aston is a long established university led by its three main beneficiaries – students, business and the professions, and our region and society. Aston University is located in Birmingham and at the heart of a vibrant city and the campus houses all the university’s academic, social and accommodation facilities for our students. Saskia Hansen is the interim Vice-Chancellor & Chief Executive.
Aston University was named University of the Year 2020 by The Guardian and the University’s full time MBA programme has been ranked in the top 100 in the world in the Economist MBA 2021 ranking. The Aston MBA has been ranked 12th in the UK and 85th in the world.
For media inquiries in relation to this release, contact Rebecca Hume, Press and Communications Manager, on (+44)7557 745416 or email: r.hume@aston.ac.uk
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