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Prospective associations between appetitive traits and weight gain in infancy
Cornelia H M van Jaarsveld1, Clare H Llewellyn, Laura Johnson
1Health Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, United Kingdom.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
|November 11, 2011
Summary
Appetitive traits, like how children respond to food cues and satiety, predict later weight gain more strongly than weight predicts these traits. This suggests early eating behaviors influence infant weight development.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric obesity research
- Developmental psychology
- Behavioral genetics
Background:
- Variability in weight gain is hypothesized to be linked to differences in appetitive traits (e.g., food responsiveness, satiety responsiveness).
- Previous studies were mostly cross-sectional, preventing determination of whether appetitive traits influence weight or vice versa.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the prospective associations between appetitive traits and subsequent weight.
- To compare the strength of associations between appetitive traits predicting weight versus weight predicting appetitive traits.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from the Gemini twin cohort (2402 families).
- Assessed 4 appetitive traits using the Baby Eating Behavior Questionnaire at 3 and 15 months of age.
- Analyzed infant weights at 3, 9, and 15 months using path analysis and bootstrapping to compare prospective associations.
Main Results:
- Longitudinal analyses of 2213 infants revealed that the influence of appetitive traits on subsequent weight was significantly stronger (coefficients: 0.17–0.33) than the influence of weight on subsequent appetitive traits (coefficients: 0.07–0.13).
- These findings were consistent when examining changes over the 3- to 15-month period.
Conclusions:
- Appetitive traits are stronger predictors of future weight gain than weight is of future appetitive traits in early childhood.
- These results support the hypothesis that individual differences in appetitive traits, combined with environmental factors promoting overeating, play a role in early childhood weight gain.
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