Deconstructing food parenting approaches to obesity prevention for the highly food motivated child

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PROJECT SUMMARY High levels of food motivation among young children are heritable, track over time, and associated with elevated risks of unhealthy eating and obesity. Despite significant growth of family-based obesity prevention efforts, the evidence base is remarkably scant on parenting highly food motivated children to prevent obesity and poor dietary outcomes. The need to move away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to food parenting is particularly pronounced for children from racial and ethnic minority families with low income that experience greater disparities in obesity, are underrepresented in the food parenting and family-based prevention literatures, and for whom prevention efforts have had limited success to date. Our goal is to generate a robust basic science evidence for parenting highly food motivated children to prevent excessive dietary intakes and body mass index (BMI) gains during the preschool years among racial/ethnic minority families with low incomes. Using a prospective cohort design, we propose to follow 450 Hispanic and Black caregiver/child dyads with low incomes at three time points as children transition from preschool to elementary school, when significant numbers of children begin to experience problems of poor diet quality and obesity. We will recruit children with varying food motivation to understand whether highly food motivated children have different needs than other children. We propose a multi-method approach using state-of-the-art measures, including ecological momentary assessment, to comprehensively investigate the amount, types, and consistency of food parenting practices (i.e., specific, goal-oriented behaviors) needed to prevent food motivated behaviors, excessive dietary intake, and BMI gains in children. Specifically, we propose to comprehensively evaluate the role of structure (i.e., theoretically supportive) and its differentiation from more coercive types of food parenting control. Aim 1 will characterize multi-dimensional eating behavior profiles and obtain evidence of validity via associations with observed food motivated behaviors, excessive dietary intakes, and BMI gains over 2 y. Aim 2 will evaluate the amount, type(s), and consistency of food parenting structure needed to prevent food motivated behaviors, excessive dietary intakes, and BMI gains among highly food motivated vs. other children over 2 y. Aim 3 will evaluate whether structured food parenting practices are more beneficial in the context of global approaches to feeding or feeding styles that involve high levels of control (i.e., authoritarian) vs. more balanced styles (i.e., authoritative). Findings will 1) generate a basic science evidence base on food parenting approaches for highly food motivated children that currently does not exist, 2) provide greater specificity for family-based prevention efforts, and 3) support equity in prevention by representing populations who experience greater disparities, are underrepresented in research, and for whom prevention efforts have had limited success.