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Eating behaviour and its variability in 1-year-old children
1Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
Insights
One-year-old children exhibit significant variability in eating behaviors meal-to-meal. Measures from a single meal do not reliably capture a child
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Pediatric Nutrition
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Understanding the development of eating behaviors in infants is crucial for identifying potential feeding issues.
- Previous research often relies on controlled settings, which may not reflect naturalistic eating patterns.
- The weaning period is a critical phase for establishing lifelong eating habits.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the variability of naturalistic eating behaviors in 12-month-old children.
- To assess the reliability of single-meal observations for characterizing children's feeding patterns.
- To identify common eating behaviors, including food refusal and self-feeding, in this age group.
Main Methods:
- Longitudinal study involving 30 children aged 12 months.
- Naturalistic mealtime observations videotaped in the children's homes on four separate occasions.
- Mealtime behavior coded using a validated scheme for feeding over the weaning period.
- Inter-observer reliability assessed for coding accuracy.
Main Results:
- High inter-observer reliability (r > 0.9) for coded eating behaviors.
- Significant meal-to-meal variability in children's eating behaviors (41-54% between-subject variance).
- Food refusal (median 11 instances) and self-feeding actions (median 12 instances) were common.
Conclusions:
- Eating behaviors in 1-year-old children are highly variable, making single-meal assessments unreliable.
- Food refusal is a normal and frequent behavior in healthy 1-year-olds.
- Longitudinal, naturalistic observations are necessary for a comprehensive understanding of infant feeding development.
Abstract:
As part of a longitudinal study of the development of eating behaviour, the naturally occurring meals of 30 12 month old children were videotaped on four occasions, all in their own homes. Their mealtime behaviour was coded using a scheme developed for the analysis of feeding behaviour over the weaning period, and summarised as counts of coded actions. Thirty of these meals were coded independently by a second observer. With one exception, the reliability of the counts was high (r> 0.9). The median duration of the meals was 17 min (range 1-50) and the median number of times the mother directly gave the child food was 42 (0-172). The median number of food refusals by the child was 11 (0-89), and self feeding actions, 12 (0-101). Counts of eating behaviour for the main and sweet courses during the same meal were only modestly correlated. Between subject variance for different behaviour counts comprised 41% to 54% of the total variance. These results show that 1 year old children are relatively variable in their eating behaviour from meal to meal, so measures taken from a single meal will not reliably summarise children's feeding characteristics. Food refusal is a common feature of eating behaviour in normal children at this age.