Higher meal disengagement and meal presentation are uniquely related to psychological distress and lower quality of life in undergraduate students.

Objective: Picky eating, which occurs in emerging adulthood and is associated with psychological distress and quality of life, has historically been conceptualized as unidimensional despite research suggesting it is a multifaceted construct. Participants: An undergraduate sample (N = 509; Mage = 19.96). Methods: A cross-sectional survey assessed picky eating facets (food variety, meal disengagement, meal presentation, and taste aversion), disordered eating, anxiety, depression, stress, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and social phobia symptoms, and quality of life. Results: Meal disengagement was uniquely related to higher anxiety, depression, stress, and social phobia symptoms and lower quality of life, whereas meal presentation was uniquely related to higher anxiety, stress, and OCD symptoms, beyond covariates and disordered eating. Food variety and taste aversion were not uniquely related to outcomes. Conclusions: Considering picky eating multidimensionally may yield important insights beyond the broader construct in terms of its relationship with psychological well-being in undergraduates.

Consequences of Picky Eating in College Students.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between young adult picky eating (PE) and psychosocial outcomes (eg, social phobia, quality of life) and dietary intake. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study including demographic, quantitative, and qualitative measures. PARTICIPANTS: Midwestern undergraduate convenience sample (n = 488) recruited early 2020. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Picky eating identity and bias internalization, social phobia, quality of life, and dietary intake. ANALYSES: Pearson correlations were conducted among study variables. Independent t tests compared picky eaters and nonpicky eaters on key variables. Qualitative data were coded using content analysis. RESULTS: Picky eaters reported eating less fiber (t[445] = -3.51; P < 0.001; d = 0.34) and vegetables (t[464] = -3.57; P < 0.001; d = 0.33), and reported more social phobia (t[336.84] = 4.04; P < 0.001; d = 0.39) than nonpicky eaters. Picky eating behaviors were positively correlated with PE identity (r[190] = 0.48; P < 0.001; R2 = 0.23) and bias internalization (r[190] = 0.44; P < 0.001; R2 = 0.19). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Future research might explore additional factors that theoretically overlap with PE behavior (eg, other eating styles, disordered eating patterns) or play a role in PE (eg, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive difficulties). A greater understanding of these factors may lead to intervention to reduce PE in adults. In addition, validation of the PE identity and PE distress measures is essential for future use and to replicate this study's findings.

'Quarantine 15': Pre-registered findings on stress and concern about weight gain before/during COVID-19 in relation to caregivers' eating pathology.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has dramatically altered daily activities including eating and physical activity behaviors, which in turn may be related to eating pathology. Those who care for children (henceforth caregivers) may face the brunt of these changes, but little research has examined the consequences of COVID-19 on eating pathology in caregivers. A community sample of caregivers (N = 140) completed a cross-sectional online survey assessing demographics, stress and concern about weight gain before/during COVID-19, disordered eating (Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire-Short Form), and emotional eating (Emotional Eating Scale-Revised). Significant positive relationships emerged between stress and concern about weight gain before/during COVID-19 and disordered eating, emotional eating-depression, emotional eating-anger/anxiety, and emotional eating-boredom. Stress and concern about weight gain during, but not before, COVID-19 positively predicted variance in disordered eating and emotional eating. Stress was associated with lower emotional eating-boredom when concern about weight gain during COVID-19 was low. Stress was associated with lower emotional eating-depression when concern about weight gain before COVID-19 was low, but when high, stress was associated with higher emotional eating-depression. Stress and concern about weight gain before/during COVID-19 may be relevant to worsened disordered eating and emotional eating in caregivers, a neglected population in the literature. Targeting concern about weight gain may weaken the relationship between stress and emotional eating-depression and emotional eating-boredom among caregivers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The interaction of negative psychological well-being and picky eating in relation to disordered eating in undergraduate students.

The extant literature on picky eating focuses on children, leaving adults understudied. A sparse and mixed evidence base suggests relationships exist between picky eating and disordered eating in adults. The present study furthered this research by examining shared negative psychological correlates as moderators that may strengthen relationships between picky eating and disordered eating in undergraduate students. Participants (N = 509; 76.3% female) completed a cross-sectional survey assessing picky eating (Adult Picky Eating Questionnaire), disordered eating (Binge Eating Scale and Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire), and negative psychological correlates including anxiety, depression, and stress (Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale - 21 Items), inflexible eating (Inflexible Eating Questionnaire), obsessive compulsive disorder (Short Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Screener), and social eating anxiety (adapted Social Phobia Scale) symptoms. Positive relationships were observed between picky eating and binge eating, dietary restraint, eating concerns, overall eating pathology, and all negative psychological correlates. Moderation analyses examined if negative psychological correlates strengthened relationships between picky eating and disordered eating. Higher inflexible eating and anxiety and stress symptoms interacted with higher picky eating in relation to disordered eating, specifically eating concerns. Interactions between picky eating and negative psychological correlates did not explain variance in binge eating, dietary restraint, and overall eating pathology. Findings complement research demonstrating overlap between picky eating and disordered eating and highlight specific negative psychological correlates that may strengthen relationships between picky eating and disordered eating. Researchers and clinicians interested in concurrent picky eating and disordered eating should consider these negative psychological correlates given their potential to worsen disordered eating.

A look at the intergenerational associations between self-compassion, body esteem, and emotional eating within dyads of mothers and their adult daughters.

Research has demonstrated that mothers transmit body-related attitudes and eating behaviors to their daughters, but little is known about the role of self-compassion-treating oneself with kindness and being mindful about one's experiences-in this transmission. This research examined the intrapersonal and interpersonal associations between mothers' and daughters' self-compassion, body esteem (i.e., positive self-evaluations about one's appearance), and emotional eating (i.e., the tendency to eat in response to negative affect). Dyads (N = 191) of Canadian mothers (mean age: 57.37) and daughters (mean age: 28.76) completed self-report questionnaires. Dyadic, structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analyses were conducted to examine relationships among the study variables. Controlling for mothers' and daughters' body mass index, self-compassionate mothers and daughters reported higher body esteem. Additionally, daughters of self-compassionate mothers were more self-compassionate and had higher body esteem, which in turn predicted lower emotional eating. Adding to the literature on the intergenerational transmission of eating-related attitudes and behaviors, results suggest a relation between mother and daughter self-compassion, body esteem, and eating behaviors. Results also showed that attitudes toward oneself were related to eating behaviors. Mothers' self-compassion might provide a model for daughters, which in turn is associated with daughters' improved body esteem and eating behaviors.

Power of packaging: Evaluations of packaged fruits and vegetables by school-age children in the U.S.

Eating healthfully is a challenge in the US; most American children do not eat enough fruits and vegetables and exceed daily recommendations for salts, fats, and sugars. The pervasiveness of packaged foods, which are often reduced in nutritional value through added salt, fat, or sugar, adds to the challenge of eating healthfully. There is still much to learn about how aspects of packaging impact children. This study examined how different types of packaging (i.e., healthy, fun, plain, unpackaged) of fruits and vegetables influence children's health and taste evaluations. Thirty children (Mage = 7.1 years, SD = 1.0) participated in a food rating task where they rated the health, taste, and their willingness to try 64 packaged fruits and vegetables (on a scale from 1 to 5). Children were influenced by aspects of the packaging; they rated healthy and fun packaging more favorably in most cases suggesting that children respond more positively to visually appealing packaging than to plain packaging. These results are consistent with previous findings and have implications for how to promote increased fruit and vegetable consumption among children. Future research should explore if the same trends exist when packaged fruits and vegetables are compared to other packaged snack foods.

Retrospective reports of childhood feeding in mother-daughter dyads.

Significant research has linked parents' feeding practices to children's eating habits. However, much less is known about how childhood feeding relates to longer-term outcomes such as eating in adulthood. The current study uses retrospective reports from mother-daughter dyads (N = 217) to compare childhood feeding practices and to examine how recalled feeding is related to current eating (emotional eating, intuitive eating, unrestrained eating) and body mass index (BMI) in adult daughters. Mothers and daughters completed the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire (CFPQ), subscales from the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire, and the Intuitive Eating Scale. Results of an exploratory factor analysis indicated that mothers and daughters largely had similar factor structures on retrospective reports, with factor loadings varying on four of twelve original CFPQ subscales: monitoring, restriction for health, child control, and modelling. Paired samples t-tests examined mean differences between mother and daughter reports on each subscale; there was no significant difference between mother and daughter reports on six of the 11 scales. Daughters reported significantly higher levels of pressure to eat; mothers reported significantly higher levels of healthy practices, child control, involvement, and unhealthy environment than their daughters recalled. Hierarchical regressions revealed that daughters' reports of specific childhood feeding practices accounted for significant change in unadjusted variance for uncontrolled eating (18.8%), emotional eating (13.1%), intuitive eating (14.7%), and BMI (16.1%). Similarly, regressions revealed that mothers' reports of childhood feeding practices accounted for significant change in unadjusted variance for emotional eating (11.5%) and BMI (11.2%), but not uncontrolled or intuitive eating. Collectively, results lend strong support to the use of retrospective reports on childhood feeding and provide evidence that recalled childhood feeding practices have lasting relations with adult eating behaviors.

Mindful feeding: A pathway between parenting style and child eating behaviors.

Certain child eating behaviors (e.g., food fussiness, emotional overeating, and disruptive mealtime behaviors) can create challenges for caregivers and result in short- and long-term health consequences (e.g., lower fruit and vegetable intake, a deficiency of essential nutrients, greater intake of energy-dense foods and sugary beverages, and/or higher BMI) for the children. The role of mindful feeding-cultivating a present-centered awareness in the feeding context to increase parents' awareness of their own responsive (and non-responsive) feeding behaviors-has not been explored as it relates to parenting and children's problematic eating behaviors. The objective of this study was to understand whether the relations between parenting style and child eating behaviors often documented in the literature are mediated by mindful feeding. Using self-reports from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) of 496 mothers and fathers of young children (age 2-7 years old), we explored whether mindful feeding mediates the relation between parenting style and child eating behaviors. As hypothesized, authoritative parenting was related to higher rates of mindful feeding (ß=.16, 95% C.I. [.05, .18]), while authoritarian (ß=-.34, 95% C.I. [-.32, -.17]) and permissive parenting (ß= -.15, 95% C.I. [-.18, -.05]) were related to lower rates of mindful feeding. Mindful feeding mediated the relation between each parenting style and each child eating behavior (i.e., food fussiness, problematic mealtime behaviors, and emotional overeating). These findings suggest that that mindful feeding may be a promising new construct, and its relation to feeding interventions aimed at improving problematic child eating behaviors should be further evaluated.

Social movement involvement and healthy diet and activity behaviors among US adults.

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, namely poor diet and inadequate physical activity, significantly contribute to poor health and obesity risk, which in turn impact chronic illness outcomes. A possible approach to improving these health behaviors and subsequent outcomes is to capitalize on the theorized link between social movement involvement and overlapping health behaviors. Social movement involvement may be a viable stealth intervention for health, utilizing intrinsic motivators to improve health without an explicit focus on changing health behavior. Thus, the current study explored the links between social movement involvement and diet and physical activity. Two samples from a college population (N = 196) and the general population (N = 195) participated in an online survey, which included measures of social movement involvement, social movement-related health behaviors and dietary intake and physical activity. After controlling for known covariates, social movement-related health behaviors mediated the relationship between level of social movement involvement and fruit and vegetable consumption, whole grain intake and average daily physical activity in both samples. These findings suggest that health behaviors associated with social movement involvement may be an important mechanism in promoting health among social movement members and that the model holds across adult populations. This research adds to existing literature on stealth interventions as a viable means of improving important behavioral health components linked with obesity and chronic disease and supports social movement involvement as a potential form of stealth intervention.

An examination of food parenting practices: structure, control and autonomy promotion.

OBJECTIVE: In recent years, researchers have been working towards creating a standard conceptual framework of food parenting. To understand how parents' reports correspond with the proposed model, the current study examined parents' reports of their feeding behaviours in the context of a newly established framework of food parenting. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, with a two-week follow-up for a subset of the sample. Participants completed a quantitative and qualitative survey to assess food parenting. The survey included items from common food parenting instruments to measure the constructs posited in the framework. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted to ascertain which items related most closely to one another and factors were mapped on to existing constructs. SETTING: Online. PARTICIPANTS: Parents of children aged 2·5-7 years (n 496). Of these, 122 completed a two-week follow-up. RESULTS: Analyses revealed eleven aspects of Structure (monitoring; distraction; family presence; meal/snack schedule; unstructured practices; healthy/unhealthy food availability; food preparation; healthy/unhealthy modelling; rules), ten aspects of Coercive Control (pressure to eat; using food to control emotions; food incentives to eat; food incentives to behave; non-food incentives to eat; restriction for health/weight; covert restriction; clean plate; harsh coercion) and seven aspects of Autonomy Promotion (praise; encouragement; nutrition education; child involvement; negotiation; responsive feeding; repeated offering). Content validity, assessed via parents' open-ended explanations of their responses, was high, and test-retest reliability was moderate to high. Structure and Autonomy Promoting food parenting were highly positively correlated. CONCLUSIONS: In general, parents' responses provided support for the model, but suggested some amendments and refinements.

Parental correlates of food parenting practices: socioeconomic status, weight, and dieting status.

Little research has considered how parents' socioeconomic indicators, body mass index (BMI), and dieting status relate to their food parenting. The current study used self-report data from parents of young children to examine group differences on three types of food parenting practices (Structure, Coercive Control, and Autonomy Promotion). Few group differences were found for socioeconomic indicators. However, parent dieting status moderated effects of parent BMI on structure and autonomy promotion. Obese, non-dieting parents reported lower scores on both variables. More research is needed to better understand how parents' dieting status moderates the effects of parent's weight.

Friday Night Is Pizza Night: A Comparison of Children's Dietary Intake and Maternal Perceptions and Feeding Goals on Weekdays and Weekends.

Childhood obesity is a serious issue in the U.S. While obesity is the result of a multitude of factors, a great deal of research has focused on children's dietary intake. While children's eating patterns vary throughout the week, not much else is known about weekday-weekend differences. Therefore, the current study examined differences in the frequency and portion size of school-age children's consumption of common foods and beverages, as well as mothers' perceptions of those items and their child feeding goals, on weekdays and weekends. A total of 192 mothers of children aged 7 to 11 were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Results showed a consistent pattern of more frequent consumption and larger portions of unhealthy foods and beverages on weekends. This aligned with mothers' perceptions of those foods and beverages as weekend items, as well as their feeding goals of health and price being less important on weekends. It is quite possible that weekends are viewed as having less structure and facilitate schedules that allow children to consume more meals away from home. These findings shed light on additional risk factors in children's eating patterns and highlight the serious implications that day of the week can have on childhood obesity.

Using food as a reward: An examination of parental reward practices.

Eating patterns and taste preferences are often established early in life. Many studies have examined how parental feeding practices may affect children's outcomes, including food intake and preference. The current study focused on a common food parenting practice, using food as a reward, and used Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to examine whether mothers (n = 376) and fathers (n = 117) of children ages 2.8 to 7.5 (M = 4.7; SD = 1.1) grouped into profiles (i.e., subgroups) based on how they use of food as a reward. The 4-class model was the best-fitting LPA model, with resulting classes based on both the frequency and type of reward used. Classes were: infrequent reward (33%), tangible reward (21%), food reward (27%), and frequent reward (19%). The current study also explored whether children's eating styles (emotional overeating, rood fussiness, food responsiveness, and satiety responsiveness) and parenting style (Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive) varied by reward profile. Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that the four profiles differed significantly for all outcome variables except satiety responsiveness. It appears that the use of tangible and food-based rewards have important implications in food parenting. More research is needed to better understand how the different rewarding practices affect additional child outcomes.

Structure-based feeding strategies: A key component of child nutrition.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relationship between structure, autonomy promotion, and control feeding strategies and parent-reported child diet. PARTICIPANTS: Participants (N = 497) were parents of children ages 2.5 to 7.5 recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. This sample was a Caucasian (79%), educated sample (61% college graduates) with most reports from mothers (76%). METHODS AND MEASURES: Online survey including measures of parent feeding strategies and child dietary intake. RESULTS: Use of structure-based feeding strategies explained 21% of the variance in child consumption of added sugar, 12% of the variance in child intake of added sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages, and 16% of the variance in child consumption of fruits and vegetables. Higher unhealthy food availability and permissive feeding uniquely predicted higher child added sugar intake and child consumption of added sugar from sugar-sweetened beverages. Greater healthy food availability uniquely predicted higher child fruit and vegetable intake. CONCLUSIONS: and Future Directions: In Caucasian educated families, structure-based feeding strategies appear to be a relatively stronger correlate of parent-reported child intake of added sugar and fruits and vegetables as compared to autonomy promotion and control feeding strategies. Longitudinal research may be needed in order to reveal the relationships between autonomy promotion and control feeding strategies with child diet. If future studies have similar findings to this study's results, researchers may want to focus more heavily on investigating the impact of teaching parents stimulus-control techniques and feeding-related assertiveness skills on child dietary intake.

Mindful feeding and child dietary health.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relationship between mindful feeding as a novel construct and parent-reported child dietary intake. METHODS: Participants (N=497) were parents of children ages 2.9 to 7.5 recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Parents were primarily non-Hispanic white (79%) and female (76%). Simple and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the associations between parental mindful feeding (i.e., parent mental and emotional presence while feeding a child) and their children's dietary intake. RESULTS: Mindful feeding accounted for 5.1% of the unadjusted variance in child fruit and vegetable intake. Mindful feeding accounted for 4.2% of the unadjusted variance in child added sugar consumption after accounting for relevant covariates. Specifically, higher parental mindful feeding predicted higher fruit and vegetable intake and lower sugar intake among children. CONCLUSIONS: Mindful feeding was associated with almost all indicators of healthier child diet, indicating great potential for this approach to improve child health. If incorporated into general or health-focused interventions for parents, mindfulness could significantly improve child health outcomes. Further development and validation of the Mindful Feeding Questionnaire is also recommended, as it could become a useful survey tool to assess for this construct.

Influence of maternal feeding goals and practices on children's eating behaviors.

Parents are highly influential in shaping their children's dietary habits. This study examined whether negative feeding practices mediated the relationship between feeding goals (health and convenience) and children's eating behaviors. One hundred ninety-two mothers (mean age = 34.2; mean BMI = 27.0) of 7-11 year old children participated via Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Results showed that negative feeding practices fully mediated the relationship between convenience feeding goals and children's eating behaviors (goals to healthy/unhealthy eating behaviors: ß = -0.08/.09, n.s.; goals to feeding practices: ß = 0.27, p < 0.01; feeding practices to healthy/unhealthy eating behaviors: ß = -0.57/.48, p < 0.05). On the other hand, negative feeding practices did not fully mediate the relationship between health feeding goals and children's eating behaviors (goals to healthy/unhealthy eating behaviors: ß = 0.66/-0.29, p < 0.01; goals to feeding practices: ß = -0.28, p < 0.001; feeding practices to healthy/unhealthy eating behaviors: ß = -0.26/.44, p < 0.05). In other words, children whose mothers emphasized health goals consumed more healthy food and less unhealthy food, above and beyond the use of negative feeding practices. Because parents are on the front lines of shaping children's eating habits, understanding the best point of intervention for parents (e.g., shaping parents' goals, changing parents' feeding practices) might be especially fruitful, considering that childhood obesity has become a global public health crisis and energy intake is one of the key factors contributing to this problem.

Fundamental constructs in food parenting practices: a content map to guide future research.

Although research shows that "food parenting practices" can impact children's diet and eating habits, current understanding of the impact of specific practices has been limited by inconsistencies in terminology and definitions. This article represents a critical appraisal of food parenting practices, including clear terminology and definitions, by a working group of content experts. The result of this effort was the development of a content map for future research that presents 3 overarching, higher-order food parenting constructs--coercive control, structure, and autonomy support--as well as specific practice subconstructs. Coercive control includes restriction, pressure to eat, threats and bribes, and using food to control negative emotions. Structure includes rules and limits, limited/guided choices, monitoring, meal- and snacktime routines, modeling, food availability and accessibility, food preparation, and unstructured practices. Autonomy support includes nutrition education, child involvement, encouragement, praise, reasoning, and negotiation. Literature on each construct is reviewed, and directions for future research are offered. Clear terminology and definitions should facilitate cross-study comparisons and minimize conflicting findings resulting from previous discrepancies in construct operationalization.

Meals and snacks: Children's characterizations of food and eating cues.

This study examined preschoolers' and their parents' categorizations of eating episodes based on cues used for defining these occasions (i.e., time, portion size, preparation, content, and emotion) as a meal or snack. Thirty-four children aged 4 to 6 saw pictorial representations of each cue, along with a short verbal description, and were asked to place the picture in one of three boxes: "meal", "snack", or "either meal or snack". One parent per child (85% mothers, Mean age = 35.1 years) separately categorized the same items in an online survey. Results illustrated which cues play a role in how parents and children categorize eating occasions as meals or snacks. Parents used 24 of the 32 cue-related items to distinguish between eating occasions as a meal or a snack, while children used only four. Parents and preschoolers were consistent in using cartoon character packaging to indicate a snack, and also used several of the same content cues. The current study highlights the various cues used to categorize an eating occasion, and the unhealthy character of snacks, as participants associated some unhealthy foods and very few healthy foods with snacks. Future research should focus on the role of parents, the home environment, and advertising media in shaping children's characterizations of eating occasions towards development of healthy eating habits and away from problematic eating behaviors that may persist later in life.

It's always snack time: an investigation of event scripts in young children.

This study examined whether young children include eating in their cognitive scripts for various events, and whether food-related scripts are associated with body mass index (BMI) percentile. Data were collected in a structured interview format. Participants, recruited from area preschools and day cares, provided a four-activity sequence for each of three events, and responses were recorded verbatim. Forty-four children (45% female) participated, with an average BMI percentile of 73.3% (SD = 25.9). Data were binarily coded to indicate whether each response was food-related. Frequencies were obtained, and responses were correlated with BMI percentile. Over 22% of the activities in the children's scripts involved food. The number of food-related activities reported was positively correlated with children's BMI percentile (r = 0.53, p = 0.03). Results provide preliminary evidence that food features prominently in young children's event scripts and that children with higher BMI percentiles may possess scripts that feature more food-related themes. Future researchers should investigate the causal nature of this relationship.