Published Work

The APPETItE team are happy to share their new research examining the directionality of associations between parental feeding practices and children's eating behaviours from toddlerhood to early childhood. We found that using food as a reward or contingency (termed 'instrumental feeding') appears to nurture increases in emotional overeating in early childhood, but at the same time is used as a 'natural' response to a child expressing greater emotional overeating tendencies. We also found that the responsive feeding practice encouragement to eat nutritious foods appears to influence a child's enjoyment of food in early childhood, and at the same time, a child's enjoyment of food influences parents use of encouragement to eat nutritious foods. Check out the paper for the full details.