The foundation for healthy eating behavior begins in infancy, as children learn to regulate their appetite through a combination of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have proposed a model that explores these factors and their interactions, providing guidelines for better understanding childhood appetite self-regulation. Lead author Sehyun Ju, a doctoral student in Human Development and Family Studies, emphasizes that simple advice to eat less and exercise more overlooks the complexities of individual approaches to food and the influences of appetite self-regulation.
Appetite self-regulation is crucial for healthy development and obesity prevention, as it involves an individual’s ability to regulate food intake based on hunger and satiety signals. While children are born with this capacity, environmental factors increasingly influence their eating behaviors, making it important to take a developmental perspective to track changes over time. The researchers at Illinois offer a framework based on the biopsychosocial pathways model, which considers biological, psychological, and social factors such as sensory experience, emotional self-regulation, and parental feeding practices. They also incorporate temperamental theory to explore how individual temperaments modify these pathways.
Children’s reactions to stimuli are influenced by their psychological and emotional makeup, with factors such as openness to novelty and sensitivity to negative affect impacting their willingness to try new foods. The model also considers children’s developmental stages, noting that infants have basic appetite regulation based on physiological cues, which becomes increasingly influenced by external factors as they grow older. By analyzing these pathways, researchers can understand the combined influences of multiple factors on children’s appetite self-regulation and motivations to approach food.
Socio-environmental influences play a significant role in shaping children’s eating behaviors, including parent-child interactions around food and cultural values related to food intake. Scientists can use the proposed model to guide research on specific pathways of interest, such as studying parent-child interactions during mealtime to understand how temperamental characteristics modulate associations between children’s approach to food and caregiver practices. By identifying and modifying environmental influences that are closely linked to children’s temperamental characteristics, researchers aim to provide more tailored approaches to support healthy eating behaviors.
The researchers emphasize understanding how children’s temperamental characteristics may make them susceptible to certain factors that influence their eating behaviors. For example, food insecurity may trigger reward responses towards food stimuli, requiring interventions to help children develop a secure relationship with food that is not stress-induced. By addressing all these factors based on the pathways outlined in the model, tailored support can be provided to promote healthy eating habits and prevent obesity in young children. The study was part of the STRONG Kids 2 project, which investigates how individual biology interacts with the family environment to encourage healthy eating habits in children.