Eating and Feeding Behavior: Exploring Phenotypes and Influencing Outcomes

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Our study team investigated the influence of receiving public health-style obesity risk information on parents of 3-7 year old children. This was a randomized, experimental trial in which mothers and fathers received either control (general nutrition, physical activity and sleep) information, information about the family home environment, information about genetic factors, or information about gene-family environment interaction. We assessed child feeding behavior using a virtual reality buffet restaurant. In the VR Buffet, parents did not feed their children differently in message provision conditions versus control. There were, however, differences among message provision conditions wherein mothers who received any genetic information chose higher-calorie meals in the VR Buffet. At one-week follow-up, parents who received information about genetics alone reported feeding their child more junk food and fatty meat on self-report food frequency assessments; there were no such differences for sugary beverages, sugary foods, or fast foods. Parental guilt was typically higher for participants who received family environment information alone but did not mediate the relation between information provision and feeding outcomes. While none of the messages improved feeding above the control condition, GxFE messages were associated with a better overall profile of outcomes. As such, it may be beneficial for messaging for parents about childrens obesity risk to include content that reflects the complexity of genetic and environmental contributions to obesity risk. The primary manuscript stemming from this project is currently in-press. In the course of conducting this trial, we ran an online experiment assessing parent reaction to four different types of causal explanations for children's obesity risk (versus two control conditions) on cognitive and affective reactions. We have published a paper on this work. Layered on top of this study, we are also assessing avenues for recruitment of fathers into the study given the difficulty we and our colleagues have had in identifying and effectively recruiting fathers for research. this data is yet unpublished. In terms of the second element of the research project, related to the identification of eating-related phenotypes, we conducted a survey of healthy volunteer participants. We have prepared two manuscripts in this area focusing on adult's beliefs about the role of genetics in specific eating behaviors, and also related to the beliefs of parents vis a vis the role of genes in their children's eating behaviors. The latter is in press at present. In this work, parents' genetic attributions for child eating behaviors were lower than genetic attributions related to child weight. Higher genetic attributions for child eating behaviors were related to lower self-efficacy for feeding the right amounts of food, higher-calorie food choices for the child in a virtual reality-based buffet simulation, and higher levels of guilt. The current findings suggest that heightened beliefs about role of genetics in children's eating behavior is associated with maladaptive affect and behavior among parents. This should be kept in mind when considering whether, when, and how to provide information to parents highlighting the role of genetics in children's eating behavior. A final study brings together elements of previous work to iteratively build and evaluate the use of virtual reality technology to teach individuals concepts related to the role of gene-environment interaction in eating behaviors. This work has been planned, but data are not yet collected.